BV  4655  .C53  1915 

Coffin,  Henry  Sloane,  1877 

1954. 
The  Ten  Commandments 


THE 
TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

WITH 

A  CHRISTIAN  APPLICATION 
TO  PRESENT  CONDITIONS 


BY 
HENRY  SLOANE  COFFIN 

MINIBTEB  IN  THE   MADISON  AVENUE  PRE8BTTEHIAN  CHUBCH,   AND   ASSOCIATE 
PBOFESaOB  IN   THE   UNION  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY,   NEW   TOBK   CITT 

Omnis  consummationis  vidifinem;  latum  mandatum  iuum  nimis. 
Psalm,  cxviii  (119):  96  Vulgate 


HODDER  &  STOUGHTON 

NEW  YORK 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1915, 
Bt  George  H.  Doran  Company 


TO 
EDWARD  S.  HARKNESS 

Non  est  vera  amicitia,  nisi  cum  earn  Tu  agglutinas  inter  in- 
hcerentes  Tibi. 

Augustine,  Conf.  4:iv. 


PREFACE 

The  outbreak  of  the  Great  War  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1914  seemed  to  many  to  set  us  abruptly 
in  the  midst  of  another  age.  We  had  come  to 
think  of  ourselves  as  hving  in  an  earth  which, 
with  all  its  selfishness,  was  slowly  but  surely 
responding  to  the  touch  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 
Americans  looked  upon  the  huge  armaments  of 
Europe  as  absurd  anachronisms;  the  growth 
of  intelligence  and  the  spread  of  Christian 
ideals  had  made  a  conflict  between  the  great 
powers  unthinkable.  We  were  startled  and 
appalled  to  find  ourselves  suddenly  thrust  back 
into  a  day  of  pagan  horrors.  The  folly  of  the 
strife  bewildered  us:  whither  had  wisdom 
flown?  Its  iniquity  filled  us  with  loathing:  had 
righteousness  been  overthrown?  We  were 
driven  to  ask  ourselves  afresh  what  was  wis- 
dom and  what  was  righteousness.  The  moral 
bases  of  life  were  re-examined;  the  primary 
ethical  ideals  of  Christianity  were  scanned  with 
a  new  interest.  We  were  ready  to  sit  at  Christ's 
feet  and  learn  of  Him,  and  to  go  with  Him 


8  PREFACE 

to  the  wisdom  He  commended  in  "them  of  old 
time."  A  restatement  of  the  Ten  Command- 
ments seemed  timely;  their  application  an  ur- 
gent necessity. 

The  following  sermons  were  preached  in  the 
autmnn  and  winter  of  1914-1915.  They  were 
printed  in  pamphlet  form  at  the  request  of 
those  who  heard  them,  and  found  a  rapid  dis- 
tribution ;  they  are  now  given  to  a  wider  pub- 
lic in  the  hope  that  they  may  lead  to  a  more 
eager  and  resolute  search  after  the  Kingdom 
of  God  and  His  righteousness. 

July,  1915. 


CONTENTS 

The  First  Commandment 

PAGE 

"Thou  Shalt  Have  No  Other  Gods  Before  Me"      .     11 

The  Second  Commandment 

**Thou    Shalt    Not    Make    Unto    Thee    a    Graven 

Image" 31 

The  Third  Commandment 

"Thou  Shalt  Not  Take  the  Name  of  the  Lord,  Thy 

God,  in  Vain" 51 

The  Fourth  Commandment 
"Remember  the  Sabbath  Day  to  Keep  It  Holy"      .     71 

The  Fifth  Commandment 
"Honour  Thy  Father  and  Thy  Mother"     ...     91 

The  Sixth  Commandment 
"Thou  Shalt  Not  Kill" Ill 

The  Seventh  Commandment 
"Thou  Shalt  Not  Commit  Adultery"     .       .       .       .131 

The  Eighth  Commandment 

"Thou  Shalt  Not  Steal" .153 

9 


10  CONTENTS 

The  Ninth  Commandment 

PAGE 

"Thou  Shalt  Not  Bear  False  Witness  Against  Thy 

Neighbour" 177 

The  Tenth  Commandment 

"Thou    Shalt   Not   Covet   Anything   That   Is    Thy 

Neighbour's" 197 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT 


THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT 

Exodus  xx:3:    "Thou  shalt  have  no  other  gods  before 
Me." 

X'  Were  this  commandment  to  be  phrased  to- 
Iday,  it  might  read:    "Thou  shalt  have  at  least 
fone  God."    Our  danger  apparently  lies  not  in 
Iworshipping  too  many  deities,  but  in  worship- 
Iping  none  at  all.    There  are  numbers  of  men 
and  women  who  seem  to  look  up  to  nothing. 
Instead  of  praying,  they  plan;  instead  of  as- 
piring to  a  perfection  on  high,  they  cherish 
their  own  ideals ;  instead  of  trusting  with  child- 
like dependence  to  a  Power  outside  themselves, 
they  resolutely  push  their  own  way ;  instead  of 
opening  their  spirits  to  intercourse  with  An- 
other, they  think  hard ;  instead  of  casting  their 
burden  upon  Him,  they  throw  it  over  their 
own  shoulders.     In  a  brilliant  essay,  Sainte 
Beuve  pictures  the  great  preacher,  Bossuet,  as 
seeking  "something  that  may  awaken  in  the 

13 


14    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

human  heart  that  terrible  thought  of  seeing 
nothing  above  itself."  The  difficulty  with 
many  people  is  not  in  finding  some  rock  that 
is  higher  than  they,  to  which  to  lead  them; 
but  to  induce  them  to  raise  their  eyes  to  any 
point  on  the  rock  loftier  than  themselves.  Cer- 
tain minds  have  a  fatal  faculty  for  reducing 
everything  and  every  one  to  their  own  level. 
They  are  incapable  of  seeing  in  men  vastly 
better  than  themselves  the  virtues  in  which 
these  excel  them;  but  they  quickly  detect  the 
faults  akin  to  their  own.  Firm  in  their  com- 
placencjr,  they  look  out  on  the  world  with  eyes 
slightly  downcast,  prepared  to  find  all  objects 
in  their  field  of  vision  beneath  them.  And 
whatever  is  above  remains  out  of  their  sight. 
The  only  hope  for  them  is  that  some  circum- 
stance will  lay  them  flat  on  their  backs  in  ut- 
ter helplessness,  and  compel  them  to  look  up; 
then,  perhaps,  a  new  world  will  swim  within 
their  ken,  the  world  of  things  high  and  lofty, 
the  mountain-tops  and  the  stars  and  the  over- 
arching sky, — ^the  age-old  symbols  of  God. 

Most  men  are  fortunately  not  quite  so  self- 
assured  and  self-satisfied.  They  look  out  and 
up;    and   awesome   sights   greet   their   eyes. 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT    15 

"There  are  moments,"  says  Victor  Hugo, 
"when,  whatever  the  attitude  of  the  body,  the 
soul  is  on  its  knees."  Truth  commands  their 
loyalty;  justice  enlists  their  conscience;  beauty 
captivates  their  spirits;  love  masters  their 
hearts.  They  discover  what  it  is  to  surrender 
themselves  to  the  lordship  of  something  they 
cannot  but  obey.  In  that  experience,  whether 
or  not  they  call  the  object  of  their  devotion 
"God,"  religion  is  born. 

"What  means  it,"  asks  Martin  Luther,  "to 
have  a  God?"  and  replies,  "Whatever  thy 
heart  clings  to  and  relies  upon,  that  is  proper- 
ly thy  God."  And  it  is  just  here  that  we  mod- 
erns find  ourselves  in  peril  of  the  old  poly- 
theism, against  which  this  First  Commandment 
is  a  solemn  warning.  Not  to  speak  of  the 
common  idolatry  of  trust  in  people, — such 
idolatry  as  Luther  himself  once  acknowledged 
when  he  said,  "I  expect  more  goodness  from 
Kate,  my  wife,  and  Philip  Melancthon,  and 
from  my  other  friends,  than  from  my  sweet 
and  blessed  Saviour," — or  of  the  crude  trust 
in  dollars,  we  are  polytheists  in  this,  that  we 
rely  upon  different  things  in  different  circum- 
stances, or  in  different  spheres  of  our  life;  so 


16    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

that  unconsciously  we  bring  back  under  other 
names,  or  rather  unnamed,  the  many  deities 
of  the  heathen  credulity. 
I  Many  of  us,  for  instance,  have  one  god  for 
fthe  hearth  and  another  for  the  market-place. 
We  confide  our  homes  to  love.  We  trust 
wife  or  husband  utterly,  because  love  binds 
them  to  us.  We  expect  parents  and  children 
to  fulfil  their  duties  to  one  another,  to  hold 
fast  to  each  other  through  all  the  years  their 
lives  are  spared,  because  this  household  deity, 
affection,  can  be  depended  on.  And  we  wor- 
ship the  domestic  god  with  appropriate  rites. 
He  has  his  sacraments  of  the  kiss  and  the 
remembered  personal  festivals.  He  has  his 
ten  commandments, — ^ten  reduced  to  one,  for 
love  is  the  fulfilling  of  his  law.  And  he  pos- 
sesses our  whole-hearted  allegiance ;  what  love 
cannot  do  with  wife  or  husband,  nothing  else 
can  accomplish;  when  love  fails  with  children 
or  with  parents,  there  is  naught  stronger  or 
wiser  to  fall  back  upon.  And  love  proves  itself 
trustworthy;  it  seeketh  not  its  own,  is  not 
provoked,  taketh  not  account  of  evil,  beareth 
all  things,  believeth  all  things,  hopeth  all 
things,  endureth  all  things,  and  never  faileth. 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT    17 

J      But  when  we  close  the  door  of  our  home  and 
go  out  into  the  world  of  business,  we  seem  to 

I  have  passed  into  a  realm  where  some  other 
divinity  bears  sway.  Instead  of  looking  with 
trust  at  those  with  whom  we  trade,  we  eye 
them  sharply.  Instead  of  depending  upon 
mutual  affection  to  keep  us  and  those  with 
whom  we  have  dealings  faithful  to  our  obliga- 
tions, we  rely  on  self-interest.  Men  will  do 
business  with  us  and  we  with  them,  so  long  as 
it  is  profitable,  and  no  longer.  The  tie  which 
unites  lives  in  this  sphere  is  selfishness ;  so  long 
as  men's  interests  lie  in  the  same  direction, 
they  pull  together;  the  instant  their  interests 
clash,  they  pull  apart.  And  this  god  of  the 
market-place,  too,  has  his  appropriate  rites. 
His  revered  highpriests  are  the  financially 
powerful;  his  sacraments  are  business  con- 
tracts, enforceable  by  the  strong  hand  of  law ; 
his  ten  commandments  are  the  so-called  "rules 
of  the  game,"  and  they  rest  on  the  assumption 
that  every  man  is  for  himself  first,  last  and 
*  always.  The  god  of  the  hearth  is  love;  the 
I  god  of  the  market-place  is  self-interest.  Fam- 
(  ily  is  family,  business  is  business;  and  the  an- 
cient polytheism  is  with  us  still. 


18    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

X  Or  we  have  one  god  for  the  individual  and 
another  for  society.  The  divinity  of  the  in- 
dividual is  forgiving  and  redeeming,  and  his 

]  devotee  must  also  forgive  and  try  to  redeem 
those  who  injure  him.  When  we  are  wronged, 
we  feel  that  our  first  duty  is  to  rid  our  hearts 
of  iUwill  and  vindictiveness ;  and  our  next 
duty  is  to  do  all  in  our  power  for  the  man 
who  has  wronged  us,  that  we  may  help  him 
never  to  wrong  another  again.  Our  private 
deity  requires  us  to  love  our  enemies  and  do 
them  good.  We  dare  not  ask  him  to  pardon 
our  sins,  save  as  we  pray,  "Forgive  us  our 
debts  as  we  forgive  our  debtors."  But  the  god 
of  society  is  apparently  a  different  being. 
When  a  man  wrongs  the  community  by  com- 
mitting a  crime,  the  first  duty  of  the  commun- 
ity, in  the  name  of  its  god,  is  to  protect  itself 
and  imprison  the  offender.  Its  next  is  to  try 
to  pay  him  back  for  the  harm  he  has  done, 
apportioning  a  penalty  to  fit  his  offence:  so 
many  years  for  grand  larceny,  so  many  months 
for  petty  larceny;  imprisonment  for  murder 
in  the  second  degree,  death  for  murder  in  the 
first.  The  god  of  forgiveness  and  redemption 
seemingly  has   no   jurisdiction  in  the  social 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT    19 

treatment  of  wrong,  unless  it  be  for  very  young 
or  trivial  offenders,  whom  we  deal  with  by  the 
probation  system. 

The  deity  of  the  individual  is  a  god  of  jus- 

i  tice.  If  some  one  injures  him,  he  does  not 
feel  that  he  can  give  w^ay  to  his  resentment  and 
attack  the  aggressor  with  knife  or  pistol,  or 
proceed  to  take  part  of  his  possessions  from 
him.  He  must  carry  his  grievance  to  a  duly 
constituted  court,  where  it  will  be  impartially 
heard;  and  he  must  abide  by  the  decision  of 
that  court,  whether  his  feelings  are  satisfied 

)  by  its  verdict  or  not.  But  the  deity  of  a  na- 
tion seems  not  to  be  this  god  of  justice,  but  a 
god  of  force.  If  a  nation  is  wronged,  unless 
the  wrong  is  of  the  most  trifling  kind,  it  re- 
fuses to  have  it  tried  by  a  tribunal.  Its  na- 
tional honour  justifies  it  in  resorting  to  arms, 
and,  if  possible,  compelling  its  assailant  to  cede 
it  territory,  or  pay  it  an  indemnity,  or  lose  its 
independence  altogether. 

Or  again,  the  god  of  one  group  or  class 

(often  does  not  seem  to  them  to  be  the  god 

of  some  other  group.    A  nation  going  to  war 

asserts  that  its  god  and  the  god  of  its  fathers 

will  assure  it  victory,  as  though  its  enemies 


20    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

and  their  fathers  were  under  the  protection 
of  some  lesser  deity.  A  group  of  wealthy- 
people  will  speak  of  the  god  who  sanctions  the 
ownership  of  property,  and  solemnly  warns 
"Thou  shalt  not  steal,"  when  radical  legislation 
threatens  to  take  something  from  them,  or 
strikers  offer  violence  to  their  belongings;  but 
they  apparently  think  that  some  other  deity 
sanctions  the  right  of  the  labourer  to  his  job 
and  to  a  living  wage.  On  the  other  hand,  a 
group  of  working  men  will  insist  that  the  god 
of  justice  and  of  the  future  approves  of  their 
violent  methods  of  obtaining  their  demands; 
and  speak  as  if  all  his  sympathy  and  tender- 
ness were  with  them,  while  the  capitalists 
against  whom  they  are  striving  are  under  some 
outworn  pagan  god  of  property — a  god  of  the 
past. 
y  On  every  hand  we  find  ourselves  living  not 
;  under  one  God,  but  under  many.  Whatever 
may  be  our  nominal  religion,  we  are  practically 
polytheists,  and  as  really  polytheists  as  the 
crude  savages  who  people  the  world  with  mul- 
titudes of  discordant  spirits.  Our  gods  clash: 
the  god  of  the  hearth  with  the  god  of  the  shop ; 
the  god  of  persons  with  the  god  of  nations; 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT    21 

the  god  of  Russians  with  the  god  of  Germans ; 

the  god  of  property  with  the  god  of  humanity. 

There  is  as  much  war  among  our  deities  as 

|1  among  the  quarrelHng  Olympians  of  Homer, 

lior  the  contending  divinities  of  Ammon  and 

'  Moab,  of  Phihstia  and  Judah. 

The  baneful  result  of  many  gods  is  to  rob 
life  of  its  unity.    We  are  not  whole  men  with 
(matures  all  of  one  piece,  but  "things  of  shreds 
and  patches,"  crazy-quilt  natures,  mixtures  of 
jjhalf  a  dozen  species  of  Dr.  Jekyll  with  as 
'^many  varieties  of  Mr.  Hyde/'  His  wife  and 
"^children  know  one  Zacchaeus — kindly,  genial, 
devoted ;  those  who  do  business  with  the  farmer 
of  taxes  in  the  city  of  Jericho  are  familiar 
with  quite  another  Zacchaeus — shrewd,  grasp- 
ing, hard.     His  personal   friends  know  one 
Zacchaeus;    the    community   which    considers 
him  a  social  outcast  knows  another.    That  on 
which  he  depends,  his  god,  in  these  different 
relations,  makes  him  now  this,  now  that,  now 
something  else — a  composite  Zacchaeus.     Eli 
and  young  Saul  and  David  know  and  dearly 
love  one  Samuel;  Agag  and  the  Philistines 
know  a  very  different  Samuel.     This  devout 
prophet  thought  he  believed  in  one  God;  but 


u 


22    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

he  did  not  yet  know  that  the  God  of  Israel 
was  also  the  God  of  PhiHstia,  so  he  devoutly- 
hewed  Agag  in  pieces  before  Jehovah  in  Gil- 
gal.     The  deity  on  whom  we  rely  and  after 
whom  we  fashion  ourselves  in  our  relations 
with   our  friends — the   deity  of  respect   and 
sympathy  and  willing  service — is  seldom  the 
deity  on  whom  we  depend  and  whom  we  imi- 
tate in  our  office,  or  as  patriots  when  we  think 
of    our    country's    relation    with    Mexico    or 
Japan.     Many  gods  make  us  many  unlike 
men  in  one  disunited  and  discordant  person- 
ality.    Our  name  is  legion,  for  we  are  many. 
No  doubt  most  of  us  have  taken  for  granted 
that  if  there  be  a  God  at  all,  there  cannot  be 
more  than  one.    We  may  have  felt  ourselves 
tempted   to   atheism   or  to   agnosticism,   but 
;  hardly  to  polytheism.    But  is  the  belief  in  one 
^  God  we  have  inherited  from  Israel  really  a 
I  truer  explanation  of  the  facts  of  life  than  the 
belief  in  gods  many,  which  was  held  by  peo- 
ples  so  intelligent  as  Greeks  and  Homans? 
1^    For  example,  is  it  clear  that  the  God  of  our 
« hearts  is  also  the  God  of  nature?     There  is 
nothing  about  which  we  feel  more  intensely 
than  the  distinction  between  right  and  wrong ; 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT    23 

right  we  must  love  and  wrong  we  must  hate; 
but  nature  seems  to  have  nothing  akin  to  our 
consciences. 

In  Thomas  Hardy's  tragic  novel,  Tess  of 
the  D'Urbervilles,  after  his  heroine's  moral 
downfall,  he  concludes  a  chapter  with  this  pic- 
ture: "Walking  among  the  sleeping  birds  in 
the  hedges,  watching  the  skipping  rabbits  on  a 
moonlit  warren,  or  standing  under  a  pheasant- 
laden  bough,  she  looked  upon  herself  as  a  fig- 
ure of  Guilt  intruding  into  the  haunts  of  In- 
nocence. But  all  the  while  she  was  making  a 
distinction  where  there  was  no  difference. 
Feeling  herself  in  antagonism,  she  was  quite 
in  accord.  She  had  been  made  to  break  an 
accepted  social  law,  but  no  law  known  to  the 
environment  in  which  she  fancied  herself  such 
an  anomaly."  Was  the  God  of  her  conscience, 
as  Hardy  appears  to  think,  a  moral  hobgob- 
lin by  which  she  was  terrified  without  reason? 
Is  the  God  of  conscience  a  small  private  di- 
vinity, while  some  great  conscienceless  Force 
dominates  the  world  outside?  Or  is  the  whole 
structure  and  fabric  of  the  universe  shot 
through  with  righteousness  ? 

Again,  are  we  convinced  that  the  God  of 


24    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

our  homes,  to  whom  we  give  the  family  name, 
\  "Our  Father,"  is  the  Deity  actually  in  control 
of  the  commercial  affairs  and  the  international 
contacts  of  men?  Could  He  successfully  con- 
duct them,  if  we  would  let  Him?  Can  the 
same  Spirit,  upon  which  we  rely  in  our  house- 
holds, be  confided  in  to  direct  aright  these 
other  spheres?  Will  Love  work  practically, 
and  prove  itself  the  dominant  might  in  every 
part  of  this  and  of  all  other  worlds? 
I  The  religious  experience  of  mankind  has 
certainly  been  against  polytheism.  Even  in 
Greece  and  Rome,  the  more  thoughtfully  de- 
vout came  to  feel  their  way  past  the  many 
gods  to  a  mysterious  One.  Israel  was  led  to 
discover  that  its  Jehovah  was  no  private  Pro- 
tector of  its  twelve  tribes — 

"A  god  they  pitted  *gainst  a  swarm 
Of  neighbour  gods  less  vast  of  arm" — 

but  the  Lord  of  the  whole  earth.  Believing 
souls  discover  that  they  can  no  more  have 
several  gods  than  several  wives.  One  God, 
if  they  really  come  into  fellowship  with  Him, 
claims  them  for  Himself  alone,  and  is  jealous 
with  love's  jealousy.    And  He  succeeds  in  so 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT    25 

completely  engrossing  their  every  capacity, 
that  they  have  no  unused  remainders  to  devote 
to  other  divinities. 

In  William  Morris'  Sir  Galahad^  the 
knight  is  represented  in  an  irreligious  mood, 
"with  no  touch  of  awe  upon  him,"  when  he  is 
attracted  by  the  ringing  of  a  bell,  and  finds 
himself  entering  a  chapel,  where  he  sees, 

"One  sitting  on  the  altar  as  a  throne, 

Whose  face  no  man  could  say  he  did  not  know." 

Instinctively  Sir  Galahad  kneels, 

"for  he  felt 
The  first  time  what  a  thing  was  perfect  dread." 

When  God  makes  His  own  divine  impres-  / 
sion  upon  us  in  Jesus  Christ,  we  experience 
such  a  perfect  and  complete  abasement — our 
minds  mastered  by  One  who  grips  them  as 
the  final  Truth,  our  consciences  held  by  One 
who  is  to  them  their  ideal  of  Right,  our  admi- 
ration called  out  by  One  who  seems  the  alto- 
gether Lovely,  our  hearts  kindled  by  One  who 
sets  them  all  aflame  with  love — our  whole 
self  goes  out  in  such  response  to  Him,  that 
we  have  nothing  left  to  give  to  another. 

This  old  commandment  did  not  read  "There 


26    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

is  but  one  God."  People  might  argue  that 
proposition  endlessly.  It  read:  "Thou  shalt 
I  have  no  other  gods  before  Me."  In  having, 
in  trusting  this  God,  we  find  Him  engrossing 
all  the  capacity  for  the  Divine  within  us.  We 
find  as  a  matter  of  experience  that  we  cannot 
trust  God  in  Christ,  without  His  drawing  us 
to  trust  Him  altogether.  We  are  forced  either 
to  give  Him  our  all,  or  nothing.  We  cannot 
serve  Him  with  a  fraction  of  ourselves;  it 
requires  as  much  as  in  us  is  to  obey  Him ;  and 
when  He  answers  our  obedience  with  His 
comradeship,  He  fills  our  every  need  and  more. 
If  Martin  Luther  is  correct  "that  to  have  a 
God  means  to  have  something  in  which  the 
heart  puts  all  its  trust,"  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
has  the  power  to  capture  our  entire  trust, 
and  to  be  the  God  who  has  us.  We  give  Him 
our  adoration,  our  confidence,  our  loyalty,  and 
not  a  part  but  the  whole  of  our  soul's 
devotion. 

But  to  worship  Jesus  as  God  seems  to  some 
minds  to  break  this  First  Commandment: 
"Thou  shalt  have  no  other  gods  before 
Me."  There  is  a  common  form  of  stating 
the  deity  of  Christ  which  leaves  the  Christian 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT    27 

r  with  at  least  two  gods — the  Creator  of  the 
j  Universe  and  the  Jesus  of  history.  But  that 
I  on  which  we  rely  and  which  we  worship  in 
;  the  Father  and  the  Son  is  the  same  divinity, 
i  is  Christlike  love.  It  is  that  which  bows 
us  in  adoration  before  Jesus,  when  He  stands 
at  our  side,  a  Man  in  all  points  like  ourselves ; 
it  is  that  which  we  adore  with  Him  in  His 
God  and  Father,  the  Lord  of  heaven  and 
earth.  For  us,  as  for  Paul,  "There  is  one 
God,  the  Father,  of  whom  are  all  things,  and 
we  unto  Him;  and  one  Lord,  Jesus  Christ, 
through  whom  are  all  things  and  we  through 
Him."  We  follow  Jesus  in  placing  the  trust 
of  our  hearts  utterly  in  One  who  is  love,  and 
we  find  that  love  made  plain  and  embodied  in 
the  Jesus  we  follow.  When  we  adore  Jesus, 
we  worship  God  in  Him;  when  we  pray  to 
Jesus,  we  pray  to  God  through  Him.  There 
is  for  us  one  God,  and  He  is  manifest  to  us 
fully  in  Christ. 

And  how  all  important  it  is  that,  having 
been  mastered  by  the  true  God,  we  should 
come  back  to  this  first  principle  that  we  can 
have  no  other  god  beside.  The  only  hope  of 
lasting  peace  on  earth  is  that  all  nations  shall 


28    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

so  rely  on  Christlike  love  that  they  will  allow 
nothing  else  to  control  their  public  policies. 
The  only  solution  of  our  industrial  conflicts 
is  that  all  who  have  any  part  in  the  world's 
work, — investors,  managers,  working  men  and 
women — shall  really  believe  in  the  Godship 
of  Christlike  love,  and  let  this  God  lead  them 
into  His  economic  order  of  brotherly  striving 
for  the  common  enrichment  of  the  whole 
household  of  His  children.  The  only  prospect 
of  our  becoming  complete  selves,  whole  men 
and  women,  lies  in  our  loving  this  God  with 
all  our  heart,  all  our  soul,  all  our  mind,  all 
our  strength,  so  that  no  fractions  of  our  per- 
sonalities pass  out  under  the  sway  of  other 
and  alien  ideals. 

We  said  that  God  in  Christ  has  the  ability 
to  claim  and  engross  our  all.  That  is  ti*ue, 
provided  we  are  willing  to  put  our  all  into 
the  life  He  is  willing  to  share  with  us.  Hus- 
band and  wife  can  occupy  each  other's  entire 
hearts;  and  they  do,  if  each  puts  a  whole  self 
into  their  common  life.  But  many  married 
couples  have  very  imperfectly  shared  interests ; 
and  in  the  unshared  interest  lies  the  peril  of 
infidelity.     Have  we  a  purpose  with  which 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT     29 

God  in  Christ  cannot  sympathise?  Has  He 
a  purpose  into  which  we  are  not  cordially 
entering?  Look  at  Him,  and  keep  looking  at 
Him,  as  He  opens  His  mind  and  heart  to  us 
in  the  life  and  cross  of  His  Son,  and  is  there 
not  a  love  there  for  all  mankind  and  for  our- 
selves, which  "demands  our  soul,  our  life,  our 
all"? 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT 

Exodus  xx:4<:  ''Thou  shalt  not  make  unto  thee  a 
graven  image  " 

This  is  a  commandment  for  which  we  can 
easily  discover  a  temporary  justification.  In 
the  age  of  Moses  and  of  Israel's  great  proph- 
ets, in  a  world  full  of  image-worshippers,  it 
is  difficult  to  see  how  the  spirituality  of  God 
could  have  been  safeguarded  except  by  a  dras- 
tic prohibition  against  any  likeness  of  any- 
thing in  heaven,  or  earth,  or  sea.  Pictorial  art 
vastly  enriches  life;  but  if  one  must  sacrifice 
either  spiritual  religion  or  sculpture  and  paint- 
ing, there  can  be  no  question  which  is  the  more 
valuable  to  retain.  As  it  is  better  for  a  man 
to  forego  the  development  of  his  nature  alto- 
gether on  some  lines,  rather  than  imperil  his 
moral  health;  better  for  him  (in  Christ's 
words)  "to  enter  into  life  maimed,"  rather 
than  having  two  eyes  and  two  hands  to  be 
wrecked  in  character;  so  it  is  better  that  life 
should  be  artistically  impoverished  than  re- 
ligiously degraded. 

.  S3 


34    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

But  in  our  age  is  this  commandment  needed? 
And  in  what  sense?  It  is  a  sweeping  prohi- 
bition of  all  painting  and  sculpture  whatso- 
ever ;  and  many  earnest  Christians  at  different 
ages  in  the  history  of  the  Church  have  fol- 
lowed it,  and  have  looked  askance  at  devotees 
of  art.  Those  who  delighted  most  in  beauty 
of  form  and  colour  have  often  slighted  the 
beauty  of  holiness;  and  in  protest  those  to 
whom  righteousness  has  been  the  supreme  end 
in  life  have  looked  with  suspicion  on  the  cult 
of  loveliness.  Some  exceedingly  conscientious 
and  earnest  epochs  have  been  hideous;  and 
on  the  other  hand  some  of  the  most  artistic 
periods  in  the  world's  history  have  been  both 
immoral  and  undevout.  There  is  a  sincere 
confession  in  a  sonnet  which  Michael  Angelo 
wrote  in  his  old  age: — 

Now  hath  my  life  across  a  stormy  sea, 

Like  a  frail  bark,  reached  that  wide  port  where  all 

Are  bidden,  ere  the  final  reckoning  fall 

Of  good  and  evil  for  eternity. 

Now  know  I  well  how  that  fond  phantasy 

Which  made  my  soul  the  worshipper  and  thrall 

Of  earthly  art  is  vain;  how  criminal 

Is  that  which  all  men  seek  unwillingly. 

Those  amorous  thoughts  which  were  so  lightly  dressed. 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT   35 

What  are  they  when  the  double  death  is  nigh? 
The  one  I  know  for  sure,  the  other  dread. 
Painting  nor  sculpture  now  can  lull  to  rest 
My  soul,  that  turns  to  His  great  love  on  high. 
Whose  arms  to  clasp  us  on  the  cross  were  spread. 

.,  Art,  made  life's  chief  purpose,  starves  the 
soul;  but  to  condemn  art  altogether  is  to  starve 
another  side  of  our  nature.  Thackeray  has 
more  than  one  bitter  thrust  at  the  current 
evangelical  religion  dominant  in  Britain  and 
this  country  a  generation  ago  because  of  its 
contentment  with  ugliness  and  its  fear  of  aught 
which  charmed  with  its  beauty.  He  makes 
Major  Dobbin  say  in  Vanity  Fair,  "that  for 
his  part,  every  beauty  of  art  and  nature  made 
him  thankful  as  well  as  happy,  and  that  the 
pleasure  to  be  had  in  listening  to  fine  music, 
as  in  looking  at  the  stars  in  the  sky  or  at  a 
beautiful  landscape  or  picture,  was  a  benefit 
for  which  we  might  thank  heaven  as  sincerely 
as  for  any  other  worldly  blessing."  To  which 
Amelia  utters  some  feeble  objections  based 
on  the  current  religious  ideas  of  the  day. 

We  have  moved  a  long  way  since  then,  and 
are  happily  more  Christian.  Our  Lord's  own 
keen  appreciation  of  lovely  sights  and  His 


36    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

incomparable  artistic  skill  in  the  one  medium 
available  to  Him — language — ^must  make  us 
sympathetic  with  all  who  render  life  richer 
by  chisel  or  brush.  We  cannot  forget  that  all 
things  fair  are  as  truly  reflections  of  God  as 
all  things  true  and  just;  that  God  is  Right- 
eousness and  Truth  and 

"that   Beauty 
Which  penetrates  and  clasps  and  fills  the  world." 

We  do  not  rightly  worship  Him  with  holi- 
ness alone,  but  in  the  beauty  of  holiness. 

But  granting  that  this  commandment  was 
far  too  sweeping,  what  shall  we  say  of  its  nar- 
rower application  to  pictorial  representations 
of  Deity?  William  Blake  once  remarked: 
"There  are  three  powers  in  man  of  conversing 
with  Paradise — Poetry,  Painting  and  Music." 
If  we  are  to  have  intercourse  with  the 
Unbearable,  the  Unseeable,  the  Unf  eelable,  we 
must  find  some  ways  of  intercommunication. 
If  our  spirits  are  to  carry  on  commerce  with 
God,  we  must  discover  means  of  transit  by 
which  He  may  send  what  He  wills  to  us, 
and  we  what  we  wish  to  Him.  Poetry,  the 
making   of  thought-images,   is   one   method. 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT   37 

And  the  Bible  is  throughout  poetic  in  this 
sense  that  it  employs  picturesque  words  to 
make  us  see  God.  He  is  a  Rock,  a  Shield,  a 
Sun,  a  High  Tower,  a  Home.  Music,  which, 
as  Tiecke  put  it,  "teaches  us  to  feel  feeling," 
is  another  method  of  setting  us  in  contact 
with  God.  The  Bible's  prose  is  musical,  and 
its  rhythm  affects  us,  as  well  as  its  imagery 
of  thought;  its  poetical  passages,  while  they 
are  not  rhymed,  are  marvellously  musical,  and 
lend  themselves  easily  to  use  with  voice  and 
instrument,  as  in  chants  and  anthems.  Both 
poetry  and  music  were  freely  enlisted  by  the 
Hebrews  in  the  service  of  their  faith.  Why 
was  it  that  they  barred  sculpture  and  painting? 
A  graven  image,  even  to  the  crudest  wor- 
shipper, is  probably  very  seldom  identified 
with  his  god;  it  is  only  a  symbol  of  his  god. 
There  is  a  peril  that  the  god  and  the  symbol 
shall  be  confused;  but  it  is  a  peril  like  that 
which  Jesus  took  in  instituting  the  Lord's 
Supper.  Why  should  it  be  thought  so  much 
more  dangerous  to  paint  on  canvas  or  carve 
a  representation  of  Divinity  than  to  draw 
a  thought  of  God  on  the  wall  of  the  mind  or 
grave  an  image  of  Him  in  the  intellect?    The 


38    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

Christian  Church  very  early  discarded  this 
Jewish  commandment;  there  are  rough  draw- 
ings in  the  catacombs,  and  Christian  artists  of 
the  most  saintly  and  devout  characters — a  Era 
Angelico  for  example — dedicated  their  lives 
to  imaging  the  Divine.  The  chief  artistic 
treasures  of  the  Christian  centuries  are  paint- 
ings which  try  to  portray  Biblical  scenes  or 
persons — Christ,  the  Virgin  Mother,  even  God 
the  Father.  But  from  time  to  time  there  have 
been  vigorous  protests  from  spiritually  minded 
men  who  have  felt  that  these  pictorial  rep- 
resentations were  an  injury  to  real  religion. 
One  thinks  of  the  Iconoclasts  in  Byzantium, 
the  early  Protestants  who  smashed  the  carved 
figures  on  the  cathedrals  of  France  and  Hol- 
land, the  Puritans  who  destroyed  stained  glass 
windows,  reduced  the  architecture  of  their 
churches  to  the  most  baldly  simple  lines, 
and  could  not  abide  sacred  painting  or  sculp- 
ture.   Were  they  right? 

John  Addington  Symonds,  the  historian  of 
The  Renaissance  in  Italy,  will  certainly  not  be 
discounted  as  one  who  lacked  artistic  appre- 
ciation; but  in  his  volume  on  The  Fine  Arts, 
he  ranges  himself  entirely  on  the  side  of  the 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT    39 

Iconoclasts.  "The  spirit  of  Christianity  and 
the  spirit  of  figurative  art  are  opposed,  not 
because  such  art  is  immoral,  but  because  it 
cannot  free  itself  from  sensuous  associations. 
When  the  worshipper  would  fain  ascend  on 
wings  of  ecstasy  to  God,  the  infinite,  ineffable, 
unrealised,  how  can  he  endure  the  contact  of 
these  splendid  forms,  in  which  the  lust  of  the 
eye  and  the  pride  of  life,  professing  to  sub- 
serve devotion,  remind  him  rudely  of  sensuous 
existence?  Religion  has  its  proper  end  in 
contemplation  and  in  conduct.  Art  aims  at 
presenting  sensuous  embodiment  of  thoughts 
and  feelings  with  a  view  to  intellectual  en- 
joyment. There  are  many  feelings  which  can- 
not properly  assume  a  sensuous  form;  and 
these  are  precisely  religious  feelings,  in  which 
the  soul  abandons  sense,  and  leaves  the  actual 
world  behind,  to  seek  her  freedom  in  a 
spiritual  region.  As  meteors  become  kmiinous 
by  traversing  the  grosser  element  of  our  ter- 
restrial atmosphere,  so  the  thoughts  that  art 
employs  must  immerse  themselves  in  sensuous- 
ness.  Our  deepest  thoughts  about  the  world 
and  God  are  incapable  of  personification  by 
any  aesthetic  process." 


40    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

Admitting  that  art  may,  and  often  has,  de- 
graded religion  by  attempting  to  set  forth  in 
form  and  colour  that  which  cannot  be  so  de- 
scribed, is  it  not  true  that  art  has  many  times 
proved  itself  a  valuable  assistant  to  worship? 
Dion  Chrysostom,  speaking  of  the  colossal 
figure  of  Zeus,  carved  by  Phidias  in  the  temple 
at  Olympia,  says,  "Whosoever  among  mortal 
men  is  most  utterly  toil-worn  in  spirit,  having 
drunk  the  cup  of  many  sorrows  and  calami- 
ties, when  he  stands  before  this  image,  me- 
thinks,  must  utterly  forget  all  the  terrors  and 
woes  of  this  mortal  life."  And  in  Christian 
circles  there  are  paintings  of  the  Face  of 
Christ  or  figures  of  Him  ( Thorwaldsen's,  to 
name  but  one) ,  which  have  gained  a  fixed  place 
in  the  affection  of  devout  hearts.  Many  of 
our  Roman  Catholic  brethren,  and  possibly 
some  Protestants,  find  the  Crucifix  an  aid  to 
devotion.  Are  we  to  condemn  with  the 
severity  of  this  Commandment  the  making  of 
any  representation  whatsoever  of  the  Divine? 
1  Most  of  us  will  answer.  No.  Such  painted 
or  carved  images,  if  properly  used,  cannot  be 
considered  evil;  they  may  be,  as  their  users 
assert,  helps  to  devotion.    But  it  is  surely  not 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT    41 

without  significance  that  no  authentic  memory 
whatever  remains  in  the  earth  of  the  personal 
appearance  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Many  of 
HTs  sayings  have  been  carefully  preserved  in 
the  very  words  He  used;  occasionally  a  ges- 
ture or  look  is  mentioned  in  the  narrative  of  a 
memorable  act ;  we  possess  unf  orgetable  word- 
pictures  of  what  He  did  and  suffered,  but  not 
a  syllable  to  recall  what  He  was  to  men's  eyes. 
We  do  not  know  whether  He  was  tall  or  short, 
stout  or  slight,  dark  or  fair.  Not  a  hint  is 
given  us  of  the  shape  of  a  single  feature  of 
His  face  nor  of  the  colour  of  His  eyes.  How 
accurate  and  full  is  the  portrait  of  His  spirit, 
His  mind  and  heart!  How  completely  lost 
in  oblivion  is  His  outward  form!  A  careful 
Providence  has  done  His  best  to  teach  us  that 
the  religious  meanings  of  all  things,  of  the 
Word  made  flesh  Himself,  lie  not  on  their  sur- 
face, where  the  eye  can  see  them,  but  hidden, 
where  they  can  be  reached  only  by  the  eyes  of 
the  heart.  An  image,  a  painting,  runs  the  risk 
of  giving  us  superficial  impressions,  and  con- 
cealing the  message  to  the  heart  and  the 
conscience.  We  seem  to  be  so  constituted  that 
when  we  dwell  with  satisfaction  on  that  which 


42    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

pleases  our  sight,  we  dull  our  inward  vision. 
Those  who  rejoice  most  heartily  in  pictured 
symbols  of  the  Divine,  are  seldom  those  whose 
consciences  grave  Him  in  righteousness  in 
their  own  or  their  world's  life. 

This  ancient  decree  points  out  a  genuine 
peril;  and  the  history  of  religion  enforces  its 
lesson.  It  is  they  who  endure  as  seeing  Him 
who  is  invisible,  without  insisting  on  seeing 
some  representation  of  Him  with  their  eyes, 
who  succeed  in  making  His  character  most 
manifest  in  what  they  themselves  are,  and  in 
what  they  make  their  homes,  their  work,  their 
country,  to  be.  We  do  not  go  for  our  stimuli 
to  righteousness,  nor  for  our  highest  thought 
of  God,  to  the  Greeks  of  the  Golden  Age  of 
Pericles  or  to  the  Italians  of  the  Renaissance, 
but  to  image-forbidden  Hebrews  and  to 
image-destroying  Reformers,  Protestants  and 
Puritans. 

But  very  unfortunately  Protestants  and 
Puritans  have  not  as  yet  satisfactorily  evolved 
an  art  of  their  own  that  harmonises  with  their 
religion ;  and  the  artistic  impulse,  which  cannot 
be  neglected,  constantly  revives  forms  not  in 
keeping  with  the  faith  of  freed  spirits.    Ben- 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT    43 

jamin  Jowett,  the  celebrated  master  of  Balliol 
College,  Oxford,  after  a  tour  through  some  of 
the  cathedrals  of  England,  observed:  "It  is 
the  great  misfortune  of  Protestantism  never 
to  have  had  an  art  or  architecture.  Hence  it 
is  always  being  dragged  back  through  the 
medium  of  art  into  Romanism.  The  finest 
pictures  and  the  noblest  churches  are  Roman, 
and  Roman  is  Pagan,  and  Romanism  is 
dragged  through  the  medium  of  art  into  Pa- 
ganism, and  into  a  bastard  form  of  Pagan- 
ism." One  can  think  of  many  a  church  erected 
for  Protestant  worship,  which  is  not  fitted  for 
preaching — an  invariable  and  most  important 
part  of  our  conception  of  fellowship  with  God 
— and  which  transforms  the  simple  friendly 
meal  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  where  Christ's  dis- 
ciples gather  as  one  family  about  His  table, 
into  a  ceremony  much  more  in  keeping  with  the 
partially  non-Christian  ideas  which  underlie 
the  Roman  Mass.  We  must  not  follow  the  let- 
ter of  this  commandment  in  scorning  the  figu- 
rative arts;  they  will  take  their  own  revenge 
upon  us,  for  man  is  as  normally  artistic  as  he 
is  religious;  but  we  must  set  ourselves  as  a 
community  to  developing  an  art  and  an  archi- 


44    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

lecture  that  are  the  natural  servants  of  the 
spiritual  religion  of  the  God  and  Father  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

Nor  is  it  so  easy,  as  many  think,  to  draw  a 
sharp  distinction  between  a  graven  image  of 
stone  that  the  eye  can  see  and  a  graven  image 
of  thought  which  exists  only  in  the  mind,  and 
be  perfectly  safe  with  this  latter  representation 
of  God.  The  real  difficulty  with  a  graven 
image  is  its  rigidity;  it  is  a  fixed,  and  there- 
fore a  limited  and  confining  representation  of 
Him  who  is  limitless.  A  growing  soul  de- 
mands a  growing  thought  of  God;  and  men- 
tal images  can  be  as  stationary  as  marble  or 
bronze.  How  perilous  it  is  to  carry  in  one's 
mind  at  twenty  the  same  image  of  God  that 
stood  there  at  ten!  How  pathetic  to  see  a 
man  of  forty  looking  with  the  eyes  of  his 
heart  at  a  Divine  Face  that  has  no  more  in  it 
for  him  than  he  saw  there  when  he  was  one 
and  twenty !  Life's  experiences  to  a  believing 
spirit  are  so  many  disclosures  of  a  great 
Companion ;  and  each  experience  ought  to  put 
something  more  into  the  Face  of  that  Com- 
panion which  presents  itself  to  the  mind's 
eye.    Thought-images  of  God  are  constructed 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT    45 

by  every  generation;  they  represent  in  some 
creed  or  confession  of  faith  all  that  they  and 
their  predecessors  have  discovered  of  His 
character,  expressed  in  the  ideas  and  language 
of  their  age.  And  these  are  living  things,  a  liv- 
ing Image,  to  contemporaries,  or  at  all  events 
to  those  who  frame  them ;  but  when  passed  on 
to  the  next  generation,  they  are  often  as  lifeless 
as  a  carved  statue.  We  worship  the  God  of 
our  fathers;  but  we  dare  not  worship  our 
fathers'  image  of  God;  that  is  idolatry.  A 
living  God  will  not  allow  Himself  to  be  con- 
I  fined  within  the  rigid  forms  of  the  thought  of 
*any  particular  age,  and  passed  on  in  those 
forms  to  its  successor.  A  living  God  demands  ^ 
ever  fresh  attempts  by  living  minds  to  think  ^ 
Him  out.  They  must  carefully  conserve  all 
the  spiritual  discoveries  of  their  predecessors; 
they  must  take  into  account  all  the  spiritual 
discoveries  of  their  own  day;  they  must  use 
all  the  intellectual  tools  their  age  affords  them 
in  graving  the  worthiest  thought  of  Him  to 
whom  they  give  all  their  heart,  soul,  mind  and 
strength.  Not  all  idols  are  made  of  wood  and 
stone;  there  are  idols  of  the  mind — dead 
thoughts  of  God  which  are  not  the  products 


46    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

of  a  living  experience  of  Him.     To  harbour 
such  is  to  go  directly  counter  to  the  spirit  of 

•;xj;his  ancient  commandment. 

But,  above  all,  this  commandment  is  a  pro- 
test against  man-made  gods ;  our  thought  of 

K  God  must  be  God-given.  Religion  is  not 
man's  search  into  the  invisible,  constructing 
image  after  image,  and  testing  which  of  them 
corresponds  with  the  Fact  he  discovers.  Re- 
ligion is  God's  search  for  man,  disclosing  Him- 
self to  us  by  everything  He  does  for  us  and 
in  us — by  the  world  He  made,  by  the  natures 
He  gave  us  in  His  own  likeness,  by  all  His 
acts  in  history,  and  by  all  His  personal  deal- 
ings with  ourselves.    Our  part  is  not  to  search 

^  for  Him,  but  to  respond  to  His  search  for  us ; 
not  to  fancy  some  imaginary  Divine  Being  we 
would  like  to  worship,  but  to  picture  to  our 
minds  Him  whom  we  have  found  in  our  ex- 
periences constraining  us  to  adore  Him  by  all 
the  unveilings  of  His  goodness  He  has  made 
to  us  or  to  any  man.  Hence  our  image  of  God 
will  not  be  our  fancy  of  the  best  we  can  dream 
of,  but  the  God-stamped  impression  on  our 
minds  of  the  Best  we  have  ever  known.  It 
will  not  be  our  own  painting  of  imaginary 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT    47 

perfection,  but  seme  disclosure  to  us  of  a 
perfection  we  cannot  help  adoring  as  Divine. 
Here  it  is  that  Jesus  Christ  fills  the  place 
of  the  image  of  God  in  Christian  minds.  In 
this  Man  who  actually  lived  in  our  earth,  and 
whose  memory  has  come  down  to  us  across 
the  centuries,  we  find  "the  fluent  Image  of  the 
unstable  Best."  His  image  has  been  before 
twenty  centuries,  and  each  century  has  seen 
more  in  Him  than  its  predecessors;  but  each 
bows  with  utmost  reverence  and  declares  it 
can  conceive  of  none  loftier  than  He.  When  ^ 
we  wish  to  place  before  our  minds  the  most 
adorable  Face  to  which  to  direct  our  worship, 
we  set  in  our  mind's  eye  the  Face  of  Jesus 
Christ.  When  we  find  our  consciences  com- 
pelled to  obey  their  highest  Ideal,  we  recog- 
nise that  this  ideal  is  none  other  than  the 
Spirit  of  Jesus.  And  Jesus  is  not  to  us  a 
man-made  image  of  God.  No  doubt  Jesus 
Himself  had  to  co-operate  with  His  Father  in 
attaining  His  perfection;  but  He  merely 
answered  the  promptings  of  that  Father  Him- 
self within  Him.  His  will  was  His  Father's 
will;  His  works  were  His  Father's  business; 
His  love  was  something  He  received  from  a 


48    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

Heart  above  Him — "As  the  Father  hath  loved 
Me,  I  also  have  loved  you."  Jesus  is  for  us 
God's  Self-expression  in  a  human  life,  God's 
image  of  Himself  in  a  Man.  Aught  that 
does  not  correspond  with  that  image,  whether 
it  be  told  us  by  a  Bible  writer  or  by  the  voice 
of  many  Christian  centuries,  is  not  for  us  a 
true  likeness  of  God.    We 

"Correct  the  portrait  by  the  living  Face, 
Man*s  God  by  God's  God  in  the  mind  of  man.** 

And  while  we  find  God  imaged  in  Jesus, 
Jesus  takes  care  that  even  this  God-made 
image  shall  not  bound  and  limit  our  thought 
of  God.  In  the  same  breath  in  which  He  tells 
Philip,  "He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath  seen 
the  Father,"  He  continues,  "The  Father  is 
greater  than  I."  We  have  Jesus'  own  warrant 
for  placing  ever  more  in  our  thought  of  God, 
more  even  than  we  find  in  Jesus.  The  "more" 
will  not  be  different  from  that  which  was  in 
Him,  or  it  would  not  be  truly  divine,  truly 
like  God;  but  every  glimpse  of  beauty,  every 
disclosure  of  truth,  every  ideal  of  righteous- 
ness, that  comes  to  us  from  any  quarter  and 
is  akin  to  the  beauty,  truth,  righteousness  of 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT    49 

Jesus,  is  for  us  God — God  revealing  Himself 
to-day  to  us,  God  making  a  larger,  truer,  more 
adorable  and  lovable  image  of  Himself  in  our 
minds,  that  we  may  answer  Him  with  a  fuller 
trust,  a  warmer  love,  a  completer  obedience, 
and  manifest  Him  to  the  world  in  a  diviner  life. 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT 

Exodus  xx:7:  "Thou  shall  not  take  the  name  of  the 
Lord,  thy  God,  in  vain" 

This  commandment  was  primarily  a  safe- 
guard for  the  sanctity  of  oaths.  On  solemn 
occasions  we  hear  Israelites  calling  God  to  wit- 
ness that  they  speak  the  truth  and  will  surely 
perform  their  promise.  We  are  familiar  with 
such  phrases  as:  *'The  Lord  do  so  to  me  and 
more  also,  if — ,"  "As  the  Lord  liveth," 
"Saul  sware  by  the  Lord  to  the  witch  at  En- 
dor."  And  they  were  warned  that  "the  Lord 
will  not  hold  him  guiltless  that  taketh  His 
name  in  vain." 

Human  society — the  relations  of  man  to 
man  in  government,  trade,  friendship,  the  home 
— rests  upon  mutual  confidence ;  and  there  can- 
not be  trust  where  there  is  not  truthfulness. 
Religion  is  the  foundation  of  society  in  the 
sense  that  men's  connection  with  God  binds 
them  to  each  other;  their  fear  to  lie  to  Him 
prevents  them  from  lying  to  their  neighbours, 

53 


A 


54    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

at  least  in  those  instances  where  they  dehber- 
ately  invoke  His  name.  And  in  a  world  of  lies 
it  is  of  incalculable  value  that  there  should  be 
some  circumstances  under  which  one  can  be  cer- 
tain that  men  are  speaking  verity.  In  the 
light  of  the  present  awful  conflict  in  Europe,  of 
what  worth  would  it  have  been  to  have  had  the 
name  of  a  God,  men  genuinely  feared,  taken  to 
guarantee  treaties  solemnly  sworn!  We  can- 
not but  share  Wordsworth's  feehng: 

"Earth  is  sick 
And  Heaven  is  weary  of  the  hollow  words 
Which  states  and  kingdoms  utter  when  they  talk 
Of  truth  and  justice." 

We  in  this  country,  who  are  sincerely  anxious 
to  be  fair,  as  we  read  the  conflicting  statements 
of  partisans,  are  tempted  to  conclude  that  all 
national  representatives  are  liars ;  and  we  long 
to  get  the  responsible  leaders  together,  put 
them  under  oath  to  some  Deity  they  revere  (if 
there  be  any  such),  warn  them  "thou  shalt  not 
take  the  name  of  the  Lord,  thy  God,  in  vain," 
and  then  try  to  elicit  the  t  uth. 

The  social  value  of  this  ancient  command- 
ment is  entirely  apparent ;  and  we  still  admin- 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT    55 

ister  oaths  to  witnesses  in  court,  to  officials 
entering  upon  public  office,  and  to  citizens  tak- 
ing up  their  responsibilities  as  sovereigns  of 
this  people-ruled  country.  But  Jesus  criticised 
this  commandment  harshly:  "Swear  not  at 
all ;  but  let  your  speech  be  Yea,  yea ;  Nay,  nay ; 
and  whatsoever  is  more  than  these  is  of  evil."  ., 
If  we  take  oaths  upon  some  occasions,  we  imply 
that  on  other  occasions  we  may  not  be  speaking 
the  truth.  No  one  ought  to  need  to  say  of  a 
Christian:  "I  would  believe  him  under  oath." 
It  is  better,  to  be  sure,  that  we  should  be  able 
to  believe  a  man  under  oath,  than  not  to  be  able 
to  believe  him  under  any  circumstances;  but  a 
Christian  ought  to  be  invariably  trustworthy.' 
His  bare  word  should  be  entirely  sufficient ;  his 
Yes  is  yes,  his  No,  no.  Whatsoever  is  more, 
although  it  may  not  be  of  itself  sinful,  must  be 
recognised  as  coming  of  evil,  coming  of  the 
current  untruthfulness  which  makes  an  oath 
advisable. 

And  how  widespread  the  evil  is!  Much  of 
the  general  falsehood  is  not  intentional.  Peo- 
ple are  slipshod  in  their  use  of  language,  pass 
on  unverified  rumours,  say  things  because  they 
sound  interesting  regardless  of  their  veracity. 


56    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

** Speaking  truth,"  says  Ruskin,  "is  like  writing 
fair,  and  comes  only  by  practice;  it  is  less  a 
matter  of  will  than  of  habit."  We  get  in  the 
way  of  colouring  narratives,  spicing  conversa- 
tion, embroidering  the  plain  vesture  of  fact; 
and  our  taste  for  simple  truth  is  ruined.  A 
large  amount  of  inaccuracy  has  become  a  social 
convention.  A  scrupulous  regard  for  fact  is  a 
serious  drawback  to  entertaining  conversation. 
One  feels  that  it  would  be  most  wholesome  if, 
into  the  midst  of  a  group  of  persons  chatting  in 
the  exaggerated  and  largely  imaginative  way 
that  prevails  in  many  social  gatherings,  some 
rough-spoken  man,  like  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson, 
should  break  with  his  blunt  demand  for  fact. 
In  BoswelFs  Life  is  this  entry :  "When  he  and 
I  were  one  day  endeavouring  to  ascertain,  arti- 
cle by  article,  how  one  of  our  friends  could  pos- 
sibly spend  as  much  money  in  his  family  as  he 
told  us  he  did,  Mrs.  Thrale  interrupted  us  by  a 
lively  extravagant  sally  on  the  expense  of 
clothing  his  children,  describing  it  in  a  very 
ludicrous  and  fanciful  manner,  Johnson  looked 
a  little  angry  and  said:  *Nay,  madam,  when 
you  are  declaiming,  declaim,  and  when  you  are 
calculating,  calculate.' " 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT    57 

And  even  when  we  take  pains  to  state  fact 
^  and  nothing  but  fact,  it  is  a  difficult  matter  to 
I  be  utterly  truthful.  Jowett  of  Balliol  was  fond 
of  recalling  an  ancient  philosopher  who  was 
afraid  of  telling  lies  and  used  to  wag  with  his 
finger  instead  of  speaking.  "Afterwards  he 
gave  this  up  as  partaking  more  or  less  of  the 
nature  of  untruth."  It  requires  no  small  effort 
to  fulfil  our  Lord's  commandment  to  make 
our  Yea  exactly  yea,  and  our  Nay  precisely 
nay. 

And  in  the  attempt  we  discover  that  truth- 
fulness goes  back  of  the  tongue  and  its  speech. 
It  is  a  quality  of  a  man's  spirit.  If  there  is 
straightness  of  nature,  the  tongue  will  not  lie ; 
if  there  is  crookedness  within,  no  matter  how 
good  our  intentions,  we  shall  not  speak  the 
truth.  Emerson  once  wrote  very  searching- 
ly:  "Use  what  language  you  will,  you  can 
never  say  anything  but  what  you  are.  What  I 
am  and  what  I  think  is  conveyed  to  you,  in 
spite  of  my  efforts  to  hold  it  back.  What  I 
am  has  been  secretly  conveyed  from  me  to 
another,  whilst  I  was  vainly  making  up  my 
mind  to  tell  him  it.  He  has  heard  from  me 
what  I  never  spoke."    A  Christian's  entire  life 


58    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

is  named  with  the  name  of  his  Lord,  the  Lord 
of  truth ;  and  a  deceitful  thought,  the  refusal  to 
look  at  distasteful  facts,  the  indulgence  of  what 
is  recognised  as  prejudice,  is  to  take  the  name 
of  the  Lord,  our  God,  in  vain,  "Thou  desiresT" 
truth  in  the  inward  parts"  is  a  psalmist's  much- 
more  Christianlike  application  of  this  ancient_ 
precept.  In  the  House  of  Commons  Disraeli 
once  said  to  John  Bright:  "Bright,  I  would 
give  all  that  I  ever  had  to  have  made  that 
speech  you  made  just  now."  "And  I  just  said 
to  him,"  Bright  reports,  "Well,  you  might 
have  made  it,  if  you  had  been  honest."  Where 
all  life  is  inspired  with  true  motives,  oaths  will 
be  needless.  All  men's  ordinary  speech  will 
be  wholly  trustworthy,  every  Yea,  yea,  and 
Nay,  nay. 

This  conmiandment  is  often  quoted  in 
connection  with  another  kind  of  swearing — 
profanity.  Happily  this  is  now  out  of  fash- 
ion, and  is  considered,  among  all  but  a  few 
very  young  persons,  to  be  a  mark  of  ill- 
breeding.  If  one  compares  the  conversation 
placed  upon  the  lips  of  well-brought-up  and 
educated  men  in  the  novels  of  a  generation 
or  more  ago,  when  every  gentleman  was  sup- 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT    59 

posed  to  pepper  and  salt  his  speech  profusely 
with  curses,  we  can  note  a  decided  advance, 
rprofanity  is  a  sign  of  an  impoverished  vocab-| 
j  ulary;  its  users  have  no  command  of  expres-! 
f  sions  for  their,  strong  feelings.    Bunyan  con-i 
i  f esses :    "I  knew  not  how  to  speak  unless  I  put 
an  oath  before,  and  another  behind,  to  make 
my  words  have  authority."    A  larger  acquaint- 
ance with  bur  wealthy  English  tongue  and  a 
truer  sense  of  the  weight  of  words,  as  well  as 
his  new  Christian  conscience,  made  him  realise 
that  he  weakened  rather  than  strengthened  his 
speech    by    his    invariable    curses.      Carlyle 
wrote  of  his  old  Scotch  father:     "In  anger 
he  had  no  need  of  oaths;  his  words  were  like 
sharp    arrows    that    smote    into    the    very 
heart."     And  he  transmitted   to   his   distin- 
guished son  that  vivid,  forceful,  adequate  com- 
mand of  language. 

Or  ^  pjoiamty  is  a  sign  of  impoverished 
thought.  Lord  Byron  remarked  of  an  ac- 
quaintance: "He  knew  not  .what,  to  say, 
ajid  so  he  swore."  We  are  told  of  Laurence 
Oliphant's  father  that  he  "got  into  the  way 
of  using  bad  words  for  want  of  something 
to  say."     Our  Lord  supplemented  this  com- 


60    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

mandment  most  helpfully  along  these  lines 
when  He  said  solemnly:  "I  say  unto  you 
ihatevefy  idle  word  tHat  Inen  shall  speak, 
Jthey  shall  give  account  thereof  in  the  day  of 
judgment."  ^'When  we  have  nothing  to  say, 
We  must  learn  not  to  try  to  say  it.  The 
babble  of  words  we  do  not  mean  is  not  so 
harmless  as  we  sometimes  think.  We  acquire 
the  habit  of  insincerity ;  we  divide  ourselves  up 
into  two  men,  one  a  fairly  substantial  and 
thoughtful  person,  unknown  to  most  of  those 
who  meet  us,  who  on  rare  occasions  comes  for- 
ward and  speaks ;  and  the  other  a  lightweight, 
very  much  to  the  fore  in  all  encounters,  who 
talks  incessantly  and  is  usually  considered 
by  most  of  our  acquaintances  to  be  our  en- 
tire self.  The  effect  of  such  division  is  not 
only  to  make  us  hypocrites,  acting  a  sorry  role 
in  the  world  with  this  impostor  who  in  no  sense 
represents  our  genuine  thoughts  and  feelings, 
but  to  diminish  the  size  and  influence  of  the 
real  man  within.  None  of  us  has  more  in  him 
than  is  required  to  fill  the  part  in  life  as- 
signed him;  we  cannot  afford  idle  words  or 
idle  deeds.  Futilities  of  speech  and  conduct 
are  costly  luxuries.     What  we  say  must  be 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT     61 

what  -we  -mean,  or^a^Jblaspheme  theName 
we  bear  as  truly  as  if  jwe_  interjected  ^ 
when  we  had  nothing  else  to  say.     "For  by 
thy  words  thou  shalt  be  justified,  and  by  thy 
words  thou  shalt  be  condemned." 

This  commandment  occurs  to  us  in  still  an- 
other connection.  One  of  the  most  shocking 
facts  to  Christian  consciences  at  the  time  of  the 
outbreak  of  this  present  war  was  the  constant 
appeal  to  God  on  the  part  of  the  leaders  of 
some  of  the  warring  nations,  and  the  ascription 
of  their  successes  to  His  favour.  We  must 
make  due  allowance  for  wrought-up  emotions, 
and  for  the  sense  of  the  justice  of  their  cause, 
in  those  who  employed  these  expressions. 
Whether  they  were  right  or  not,  we  need  not 
question  their  sincerity.  But  to  invoke  the 
name  of  God,  of  the  Christian  God,  in  the  work 
of  slaughter  and  destruction,  to  claim  Him  as 
sanctioning  national  self-aggrandisement  and 
the  use  of  force  for  its  accomplishment,  is  a 
sad  indication  of  the  widespread  ignorance  of 
what  the  name  of  the  Christian  God  really  sig- 
nifies. It  is  a  pity  that  Christians  in  speaking 
of  their  God  have  got  out  of  the  way  of  con- 
necting Him  definitely  with  the  faith  of  Jesus 


62    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

Himself.  When  Paul  wished  to  name  Him, 
he  said  most  often,  "the  God  and  Father  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ."  If  men  said  "Christ's 
God,"  would  it  be  as  easy  for  them  to  claim 
that  He  is  with  them,  blessing  their  weapons  of 
bloody  butchery,  as  they  sally  forth  to  make 
corpses  of  their  brethren  for  whose  sake  Christ 
died?  It  is  horrible  to  think  what  Mohamme- 
dans, Jews,  Buddhists  and  heathen  of  various 
faiths  and  no  faiths,  must  conclude  regarding 
the  character  of  the  God  adored  by  followers 
of  Christ  from  the  expressions  used  concerning 
Him  in  this  unspeakable  business  now  on  in 
Christian  Europe.  "The  name  of  God  is  blas- 
phemed among  the  Gentiles."  Would  that 
some  pagan  could  catch  the  ear  of  the  warring 
nations,  and,  when  they  are  thanking  their  God 
for  help  in  their  work  of  devastation,  speak  up 
boldly:  "Thou  shalt  not  take  the  name  of  the 
Lord,  thy  God,  in  vain ;  for  the  Lord  will  not 
hold  him  guiltless  that  taketh  His  name  in 
vain." 

Who  is  our  God?  Is  He  force  or  is  He  love ? 
Can  we  bid  a  departing  company  of  armed 
troops  farewell  with  the  words :  "The  God  of 
love  be  with  you  and  bless  you"?    There  are 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT    63 

circumstances  when  Christian  men  feel  sum- 
moned to  fight  and,  if  need  be,  to  die  in  love's 
name  for  the  protection  of  the  oppressed  and 
the  unjustly  dealt  with;  but  surely  no  one  who 
really  knows  the  name  of  God  in  Jesus  can  hft 
a  rifle  or  point  a  cannon  or  discharge  a  torpedo 
without  feeling  that  the  act  is  in  itself  inher- 
ently unchristian.  We  live  in  a  world  where 
we  cannot  be  saved  by  ourselves;  so  long  as 
there  are  nations  that  appeal  to  brute  might 
and  use  it,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  Christians,  much 
as  they  condemn  themselves,  can  do  anything 
else  but  resist  for  the  defence  of  their  land  and 
of  others  weaker  than  they ;  but  while  they  com- 
mend themselves  and  their  cause  to  God's  jus- 
tice, they  must  beware  of  invoking  His  name 
as  blessing  their  work  of  slaughter.  It  sounds 
perilously  like  blasphemy  to  assert  that  He,  the 
God  of  Jesus,  the  God  of  Calvary,  is  with  a  ^ 
band  of  man-slayers  on  land  and  sea. 

But  were  this  commandment  to  be  phrased 
to-day  might  it  not  more  likely  read:  "Thou 
shalt  take  the  name  of  the  Lord,  thy  God"  ?  If 
ancient  Hebrews  were  apt  to  speak  of  God  too 
frequently,  is  not  the  modern  temptation  to 
mention  H^m  too  seldom?   Ours  is  a  singularly 


64    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

tongue-tied  faith.  There  must  always  be 
a  reserve  in  talking  of  that  which  means 
most  to  us;  we  do  not  air  our  affection  for 
wife  or  husband  in  promiscuous  company,  nor 
dwell  upon  our  loyalty  to  some  dear  friend  in 
casual  conversation.  A  faith  that  did  not  sur- 
round itself  with  proper  reticence  would  be 
shallow  and  cheap.  But  love  and  friendship 
both  crave  expression.  However  undemonstra- 
tive a  person's  nature,  if  his  affection  has  no 
way  of  showing  itself,  it  cannot  live.  An  unut- 
tered  faith  stands  in  similar  danger  of  suffoca- 
tion. 

Among  ourselves  thousands  of  Protestant 
Christians  will  have  little  or  nothing  to  do  with 
causes  that  are  distinctly  labelled  with  the 
Christian  name.  They  are  interested  in  social 
settlements  or  philanthropic  societies,  from 
which  for  obvious  and  sufficient  reasons  ex- 
plicit religious  teaching  is  barred;  but  they 
take  no  part  in  the  work  of  the  Christian 
Church.  They  can  be  enlisted  for  a  sewing 
class  or  a  fresh  air  outing;  but  they  have  no 
zest  for  work  that  involves  direct  speech  on  re- 
ligious subjects.  There  is  a  widespread  pas- 
sion for  anonymous  Christianity.    But  an  un- 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT    65 

named  God  becomes  a  forgotten  God.  Work 
undertaken  originally  from  religious  motives 
loses  its  power  when  one  ceases  to  connect 
it  openly  with  God.  The  spiritual  tone  and 
force  gradually  evaporate  from  those  who  do 
not  take  pains  to  insure  that  somewhere  their 
spirituality  shall  find  full  expression.  An 
apologetic  faith  that  hides  its  head  soon 
ceases  to  possess  a  believing  head  worth 
hiding. 

There  are  time-honoured,  and  therefore  not 
indelicate,  ways  of  taking  the  name  of  God. 
There  is  the  custom  of  nieeting  publicly  with 
other  believers  once  a  week  and  acknowledging 
ourselves  God's  children,  grateful  for  His  care, 
penitent  for  our  unworthiness,  dependent  on 
His  love  and  ready  to  receive  His  message. 
Men  may  say  what  they  will  about  the  relative 
unimportance  of  regular  church-going,  they 
may  speak  (and  it  is  unfortunate  that  they 
have  so  much  reason  to  speak)  of  the  un-; 
profitableness  of  many  church  services;  the 
fact  remains  that  one  rarely  finds  a  vigorous, 
thoughtful,  earnest  and  devoted  follower  of 
Jesus  who  has  abandoned  this  practice.  Chris- 
tian faith  is  essentially  social,  and  it  does  not 


66    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

attain  normal  health  unless  it  finds  systematic 
social  expression.  We  should  not  have  thought 
much  of  the  Christianity  of  the  Dutch  settlers 
of  Manhattan  three  centuries  ago  *  had  they 
not  built  and  attended  a  church.  Why  should 
we  expect  less  of  ourselves  to-day? 

There  is  the  custom  commended  by  many 
generations  of  believers  of  daily  family  wor- 
ship— surely  not  an  immodest  way  of  parading 
our  piety  to  the  world.  The  Christian  religion 
is  so  largely  a  family  matter ; — its  chief  words 
are  family  words — Father,  son,  love,  home ;  its 
principal  method  of  self-perpetuation  is  by 
inheritance  from  parents  to  children;  its  first 
obligations  are  within  the  home  circle — "spe- 
cially they  of  his  own  household";  its  most 
typical  rite  is  a  family  meal — the  Lord's  Sup- 
per ;  that  it  craves  an  utterance  in  every  home. 
If  we  are  agreed  that  a  world  at  war,  a  world 
in  almost  as  terrible  a  conflict  in  its  industrial 
relations,  a  world  oppressing  us  with  a  burden- 
ing feeling  of  its  wrongness, — if  we  are  agreed 
that  our  world  to-day  needs  more   genuine 

*  This  sermon  was  preached  on  the  300th  anniversary 
of  the  settlement  of  New  Amsterdam — the  founding  of 
New  York  City. 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT    67 

religion,  where  shall  we  begin  to  inject  it,  if 
not  in  our  own  household? 

There  is,  again,  the  long  established  usage 
of  naming  God  in  thankfulness  each  time  we 
sit  down  at  table — another  by  no  means  osten- 
tatious manner  of  expressing  faith,  but  a  cus- 
tom omitted  in  many  homes  through  diffidence, 
or  even  because  it  is  not  considered  "smart." 
To  be  sure  there  is  no  more  reason  why  one 
should  thank  God  before  eating  than  before 
walking  or  bathing  or  dressing;  but  it  is  a 
recognised  way  of  taking  His  name,  a  form 
commended  by  the  personal  example  of  Jesus 
Himself  and  of  centuries  of  His  faithful  fol- 
lowers. Never  to  allude  to  God  is  to  banish 
Him  from  thought  and  heart,  and  to  render 
life  godless. 

But,  above  all,  this  sobering  time  calls  for  an 
end  of  our  hampering  shyness  in  taking  God's 
name  and  advancing  intelligent  faith.  When 
one  thinks  of  the  state  of  the  world,  and  of 
the  so-called  Christian  world,  one  is  reminded 
of  Hosea's  solemn  utterance:  "My  people  are 
destroyed  for  lack  of  knowledge."  We  must 
face  the  fact  of  abysmal  ignorance  of  the 
Christian  God  throughout  the  earth.     Much 


68    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

nominal  Christianity  has  only  the  faintest  con- 
nection with  the  religion  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. There  is  crass  superstition;  there  is  a 
superficial  veneer  of  Christian  words  over 
pagan  ideals  and  pagan  principles;  there  is  a 
cynical  unbelief  among  many  of  ourselves  that 
the  kind  of  Deity  we  read  of  in  the  Gospels 
and  talk  of  in  church  is  the  actual  God  who 
is  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth.  There  is  an 
urgent  summons  for  us  to  name  the  Invisible 
to  ourselves;  shall  we  call  the  Deity  on  whom 
we  rely  the  Father  of  Jesus  Christ?  There  is 
an  urgent  summons  for  believers  in  that  Name, 
to  teach  it  constantly  to  the  ignorant  millions 
in  our  own  and  other  lands.  What  possible 
assurance  have  we  that  our  American  people 
would  not  act  as  ungodly  as  any  of  their  kins- 
men across  the  seas?  Are  we  Protestant 
Christians  willing  to  pay  the  cost  in  personal 
service,  in  sacrificial  giving,  in  thoughtful  and 
toilsome  readaptation  of  our  churches  to  meet 
present  conditions,  that  our  vast  population 
shall  really  understand  and  trust  in  the  name 
of  God?  Or  shall  we  wait  and  be  forced  to 
pay  the  cost  a  thousandfold  in  some  pagan 
catastrophe  like  that  now  turning  Europe  into 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT    69 

a  shambles?  Are  we  prepared  to  make  sacri- 
fices as  great  as  those  of  war-cursed  nations  in 
order  to  maintain  and  push  forward  the  Chris- 
tian missionary  enterprise  at  home  and 
throughout  the  world,  convinced  that  only  the 
name  of  the  God  and  Father  of  Jesus  Christ, 
known,  trusted,  obeyed,  will  lift  our  world  out 
of  its  savagery  into  the  divine-human  life  of 
Him,  who  has  borne  God's  name  as  His  Son? 
To  thyself,  to  thy  household,  to  thy  mighty 
metropolitan  city,  to  thy  beloved  country,  to 
the  world  for  which  Christ  died,  thou  shalt 
take  the  name  of  the  Lord,  thy  God. 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT 

Exodus  xx:8:     "Remember  the  sabbath  day  to  keep  ^^  jr^ 

it  holy."  y^i^ 

In  order  to  make  the  whole  of  life  God's  r^ 
possession  the  Hebrews  systematically  "setl^V^r^f^ 
apart"  certain  sections  of  it.  One  nation — 
Israel — ^was  holy;  one  tribe — Levi — was 
made  the  priestly  caste ;  one  building — ^the  tem- 
ple at  Jerusalem — was  held  sacred  as  God's 
dwelling-place;  one  part  of  the  harvest — ^the 
first  fruits — was  dedicated;  one  day  in  every 
seven  was  kept  free  from  labour  as  a  religious 
festival.  A  consecrated  people,  a  consecrated 
place,  a  consecrated  product,  a  consecrated 
time — these  and  other  similarly  sanctified  frag- 
ments of  life  were  to  them  reminders  of  God's 
claims  upon  the  world  that  He  had  made. 
"Verily  ye  shall  keep  My  sabbaths,"  ran  one 
of  their  oldest  codes  of  law,  "for  it  is  a  sign 
between  Me  and  you  throughout  your  genera- 
tions; that  ye  may  know  that  I  am  Jehovah 
who  sanctifieth  you." 

73 


74    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

Were  we  to  attempt  to  devise  to-day  some 
scheme  for  idealising  life,  for  lifting  and 
linking  it  to  God,  could  we  hit  upon  a  more 
effective  method?  Suppose  there  had  been 
no  sabbath,  would  we  not  be  inventing  it? 
Does  it  not  seem  to  fit  in  with  the  structure 
of  our  human  natures?  Husbands  and 
wives  like  to  recall  their  wedding  anniversary. 
It  is  not  that  they  do  not  love  each  other  as 
truly  on  the  other  three  hundred  and  sixty- 
four  days  in  the  year,  nor  expect  as  constantly 
and  carefully  to  fulfil  their  mutual  obligations. 
But  their  sentiment  naturally  marks  this  day 
from  other  days  as  commemorating  their 
wedded  happiness.  The  specially  remembered 
day  has  something  to  do  with  their  loving  fidel- 
ity to  each  other  on  all  other  days.  A  sab- 
bath, a  day  set  apart  to  call  to  mind  the  union 
of  man's  life  with  God,  seems  as  inevitable  and 
as  natural  a  mode  of  expressing  our  religious 
sentiment.  When  the  Hebrews  spoke  of  the 
sabbath  as  part  of  the  original  creation, 
made  in  the  same  week  with  sky  and  earth 
and  sea,  and  pictured  God  Himself  as  rest- 
ing on  the  seventh  day,  they  were  expressing 
in  their  way  what  we  feel  when  we  say  that 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT    75 

a  specially  hallowed  day  is  congruous  with  the 
very  fabric  of  our  beings.  It  is  "tangled  with 
all  things,  twin-made  with  all." 

Scholars  tell  us  that  the  Hebrews  took 
over  the  habit  of  dividing  time  up  into 
weeks  of  seven  days  from  their  Semitic  an- 
cestors in  Babylonia,  from  whom  also  came 
the  idea  of  holding  one  of  these  days  as 
sacred  to  the  gods,  a  day  of  ill-omen  on  which 
to  work  or  journey.  But  Israel's  faith  trans- 
muted everything  it  received  in  its  heritage; 
and  what  it  made  out  of  this  day,  its  ancestors 
considered  unlucky  for  work,  discloses  the  kind 
of  God  Israel  worshipped,  the  sort  of  festival 
they  thought  would  please  Him.  Its  sabbath 
was  primarily  a  humane  day:  "Six  days  thou 
shalt  do  thy  work,  and  on  the  seventh  day  thou 
shalt  rest ;  that  thine  ox  and  thine  ass  ma)^  have 
rest,  and  the  son  of  thy  handmaid  and  the 
sojourner  may  be  refreshed."  "In  it  thou 
shalt  not  do  any  work,  thou,  nor  thy  son, 
nor  thy  daughter,  nor  thy  manservant,  nor 
thy  maidservant,  nor  thine  ox,  nor  thine  ass, 
nor  any  of  thy  cattle,  nor  the  stranger  that 
is  within  thy  gates;  that  thy  manservant  and 
thy  maidservant  may  rest  as  well  as  thou.  And 


76    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

thou  shalt  remember  that  thou  wast  a  servant 
in  the  land  of  Egypt."  Our  Lord  gave  the 
true  interpretation  of  the  meaning  of  the  day, 
as  it  was  understood  by  Israel's  spiritual  lead- 
ers who  had  planted  it  in  the  consciences  of 
their  people,  when  He  said:  "The  sabbath 
was  made  for  man."  Israel's  God  differed 
from  the  deities  of  Babylon  in  His  humane- 
ness ;  He  cared  for  the  slave,  the  stranger  and 
the  dumb  cattle.  A  day  set  apart  to  Him  must 
be  a  humane  day ;  and  the  sabbath  was  an  early 
step  in  leading  Israel  up  to  the  conviction  that 
God  is  love. 

This  accounts  for  the  popularity  of  the  sab- 
bath in  Israel.  The  great  mass  of  the  people 
instinctively  recognised  it  as  a  safeguard 
against  their  exploitation,  as  a  magna  charta 
guaranteeing  them  rest.  The  only  persons 
who  are  recorded  as  disliking  it  are  grasping 
traders — "ye  that  would  swallow  up  the  needy, 
saying  when  will  the  sabbath  be  gone  that  we 
may  set  forth  wheat,  making  the  ephah  small 
and  the  shekel  great" — and  devotees  of  amuse- 
ments, who  without  a  sense  of  social  responsi- 
bility found  the  rest  day  no  delight.  The  na- 
tion as  a  whole  clung  to  it  more  tenaciously 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT    77 

than  to  any  other  religious  practice.  Despite 
the  many  restrictions  with  which  the  later 
rabbis  surrounded  it,  it  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  a  day  of  burden  and  gloom  to  those  who 
lived  under  it.  A  prominent  Jewish  scholar 
wrote  a  few  years  ago:  "The  sabbath  is 
celebrated  by  the  very  people  who  did  observe 
it,  in  hundreds  of  hymns,  which  would  fill  vol- 
imies,  as  a  day  of  rest  and  joy,  of  pleasure  and 
delight,  a  day  in  which  a  man  enjoys  some  pre- 
sentiment of  the  pure  bliss  and  happiness  which 
are  stored  up  for  the  righteous  in  the  world  to 
come."  To  it  such  tender  names  were  applied 
as  the  "Queen  Sabbath,"  and  "the  holy,  dear, 
beloved  Sabbath." 

But  what  meaning  has  the  Hebrew  sab- 
bath for  us  Christians?  Technically  none 
whatsoever.  We  are  not  living  under  law 
with  prescribed  observances,  but  in  the 
Spirit  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  attempt  to  make 
out  that  in  the  New  Testament  the  sabbath 
is  re-established,  and  shifted  from  the  seventh 
to  the  first  day  of  the  week,  is  merely  to  read 
into  the  New  Testament  what  is  not  there ;  and 
the  effort  to  find  some  basis  for  keeping  Sun- 
day as  the  sabbath  by  saying  that  privately 


78    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

our  Lord,  or  at  least  His  apostles,  gave  direc- 
tions to  this  effect,  although  they  are  not  re- 
corded, is  equally  fanciful.  Listen  to  St.  Paul: 
"Let  no  man  judge  you  in  meat  or  in  drink,  or 
in  respect  of  a  feast  day,  or  a  new  moon,  or  a 
sabbath  day;  which  are  a  shadow  of  the  things 
to  come,  but  the  body  is  Christ's."  The  law 
of  the  sabbath  was  for  him  on  the  same 
level  with  the  laws  as  to  meats  and  drinks  and 
various  festivals,  a  law  that  had  its  value  as  a 
tutor  to  lead  to  Christ,  but  is  now  no  longer 
needed.  Again  he  writes:  "One  man  es- 
teemeth  one  day  above  another;  another  cs- 
teemeth  every  day  alike.  Let  each  man  be 
fully  assured  in  his  own  mind."  "The  Lord's 
day"  had  its  origin  entirely  apart  from  the  sab- 
bath. It  was  not  commanded  by  Jesus,  nor  by 
any  of  His  immediate  followers.  It  was  simply 
kept  for  sentimental  reasons  by  Christians  as 
an  appropriate  day  on  which  to  come  together 
for  worship,  because  on  it  Jesus  had  risen 
from  the  grave,  and  on  it  at  Pentecost  the  dis- 
ciples had  received  the  Spirit.  It  was  not 
a  day  of  rest;  it  could  not  be  when  the 
Christians  were  a  small  minority  in  the  popu- 
lation and  possessed  no  political  power ;  it  was 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT    79 

a  day  of  work,  but  after  or  before  working- 
hours  the  Christians  met  together  to  revive  in 
one  another  the  spirit  of  their  hving  Lord. 
Paul  was  not  concerned  with  giving  advice  to 
churches  that  could  influence  the  state  to  enact 
a  legal  holiday ;  he  was  thinking  of  little  com- 
munities made  up  of  slaves  and  artisans,  who 
must  live  their  lives  under  an  altogether  in- 
different imperial  government. 

But  as  soon  as  Christianity  became  the  dom- 
inant religious  force  under  Constantine,  it  ob- 
tained legislation  making  Sunday  a  day  free 
from  labour.  Its  motives  were  in  part  the 
identical  motives  that  set  apart  the  Jewish 
sabbath — the  desire  to  obtain  humane  relief 
for  the  labouring  classes;  in  part  it  wished  to 
secure  sufficient  leisure  for  its  religious  services. 
The  civilised  world  to-day  owes  this  work-free 
dsij  to  the  efforts  of  the  Christian  Church. 
Whatever  men  do  with  it,  they  ought  to  recog- 
nise to  whom  they  are  indebted  for  it. 

Under  the  circumstances  in  which  we  find 
ourselves  at  present  the  individual  Christian 
faces  two  problems :  how  to  safeguard  the  holi- 
day and  how  to  turn  the  holiday  into  a  holy 
day. 


80    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

When  we  insist  on  the  holiday  we  remember 
that  Jesus  came  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil. 
The  sabbath  as  a  humane  institution,  protect- 
ing labourers  from  being  overworked,  was 
something  He  prized.  Whether  this  sabbath 
should  be  kept  on  the  seventh  or  first  day  of 
each  week  we  feel  would  be  a  matter  of  indif- 
ference to  Him.  If  New  York  should  become 
an  even  greater  Jewish  community  than  it  now 
is,  we  might  well  discuss  the  question  whether 
Saturday,  and  not  Sunday,  should  be  the 
weekly  religious  festival.  As  it  is,  there  is 
more  likelihood  of  the  world's  agreeing  on  the 
first  than  on  the  seventh  day,  and  many  of  our 
Jewish  fellow-citizens  are  holding  Sunday 
services.  Which  day  is  of  small  matter; 
but  the  weekly  holiday  is  a  necessary  pro- 
vision in  the  interest  of  humanity.  Christians 
and  Jews  and  all  lovers  of  their  fellow-men  can 
combine  in  insisting  that  the  community  shall 
provide  that  on  one  day  in  every  seven  no  man 
or  woman  need  work;  it  may  go  farther  and 
say  that  if  special  inducements  are  offered  to 
him  to  labour  as  on  the  other  six  days,  it  will 
step  in  and  forbid  his  working,  exactly  as  it 
forbids  his  doing  other  unhealthy  things. 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT    81 

And  while  we  are  speaking  of  what  we  in  a 
democracy  can  induce  the  legislature  to  enact, 
it  ought  to  go  without  saying  that  Christian 
employers  will  assure  their  employees  the 
weekly  rest-day.  ^  Unfortunately  there  are 
among  ourselves  the  same  two  classes,  against 
whom  Israel's  prophets  had  to  speak  as  hostile 
to  this  human  hohdayr.  pushing  business-men 
who  keep  their  factories  or  their  office-forces 
on  duty  for  at  least  a  part  of  Sunday  in  the 
greedy  effort  for  gSLirt,  or  insist  that  labourers 
shall  toil  on  buildings  or  excavations  or  ma- 
chines to  fulfil  the  time-clause  in  a  contract  or 
carry  out  rush-orders;  and.  devotees  of  pleas- 
ure, who  are  regardless  of  the  needs  and  de- 
sires of  others,  and  give  social  entertainments, 
or  indulge  in  certain  kinds  of  sport,  which 
necessitate  work  on  the  part  of  employees .N 
"The  sabbath  was  made  for  man,"  and  espe- 
cially for  the  man  who  is  not  in  control  of  his 
own  time,  and  who  needs  to  be  protected  from 
the  greed  or  thoughtlessness  of  those  who 
would  rob  him  of  his  day  of  rest. 

In  a  complex  modern  city  it  is  by  no  means 
so  easy  as  in  agricultural  Israel  to  select  a 
single  day  out  of  the  seven  and  have  every 


82    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

one  rest  together  on  it.  It  is  certainly  desirable 
that  as  many  persons  as  possible  shall  keep  the 
same  day ;  only  so  can  its  social  value,  as  a  day 
for  families  to  be  together,  for  friends  to  see 
each  other,  for  fellow-believers  to  worship  in 
common,  be  maintained.  More  social  con- 
science, more  of  the  hmnanity  that  prompted 
Israel's  sabbath,  could  reduce,  and  profitably 
reduce,  a  vast  amount  of  the  Sunday  work  that 
is  now  required.  There  could  easily  be  more 
hours  out  of  the  twenty-four  w^hen  the  com- 
munity could  agree  to  be  quiet,  and  so  lessen 
the  necessity  for  transit  facilities,  for  the  open- 
ing of  shops  of  various  sorts,  and  for  the  em- 
ployment of  many  men  and  women  in  a  host 
of  positions.  And  this  diminution  of  the 
quantity  and  decrease  of  the  hours  of  Sunday 
work  ought  to  be  pushed,  not  primarily  for  re- 
ligious reasons,  but  for  (what  are  really  just 
as  religious  motives)  humanitarian  reasons. 
Small  shop-keepers  do  not  want  to  keep  their 
business  open  all  day,  but  they  are  afraid  to 
lose  customers,  if  they  close  while  their  rivals 
are  open.  Railroad  companies  keep  trains 
moving  so  long  as  there  is  any  profit  in  the 
traffic,  and  at  times  when  there  is  no  profit 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT    83 

to  accommodate  a  small  part  of  the  public. 
We  ought  to  aid  labour-unions,  and  socially- 
minded  organisations  of  all  sorts,  in  safeguard- 
ing the  weekly  holiday  by  legislation,  and  es- 
pecially by  the  creation  of  public  sentiment 
which  lies  behind  every  enforceable  law. 

And  if  we  insist  on  the  holiday  in  the  in- 
terests of  humanity,  we  cannot  content  our- 
selves with  a  merely  negative  position,  saying 
"You  shall  not  labour,"  and  give  ourselves  no 
concern  with  the  positive  uses  to  which  the 
compulsory  holiday  shall  be  put.  We  have  a 
right  to  protect  men  against  themselves  and 
forbid  their  overvvorking,  particularly  as  their 
overwork  probably  will  force  a  similar  strain 
on  others ;  we  have  no  right  to  compel  them  to 
worship.  We  would  be  glad,  of  course,  to  have 
every  one  wish  to  spend  the  holiday  as  a  holy- 
day,  and  we  can  remind  them  that  when  the 
holyday  vanishes  the  holiday  is  likely  to  disap- 
pear, but  so  long  as  some  will  not  keep  it  as  a 
holyday,  we  must  agree  as  a  community  to  a 
compromise.  The  religious  element  have  a 
right  to  demand  that  they  be  guaranteed  a  rea- 
sonable degree  of  quiet  for  the  fulfilment  of 
their  worship ;  the  less  religious  or  non-religious 


84    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

elements  have  a  right  to  be  allowed  the  fullest 
indulgence  in  recreation,  provided  on  the  one 
hand  it  does  not  disturb  worship,  and  on  the 
other  that  it  does  not  entail  too  hard  labour, 
for  that  defeats  the  social  purpose  of  the  holi- 
day. 
.  "'^-  For  those  whose  callings  make  it  impossible 
that  they  shall  be  given  a  day  free  from  labour 
on  the  weekly  sabbath,  the  community  ought 
to  insist  that  some  equivalent  amount  of  rest 
be  assured  them  at  other  times.  And  the 
Church  must  see  to  it  that,  if  possible,  oppor- 
tunity for  religious  inspiration  is  accorded 
them  at  the  time  when  they  are  free.  This  re- 
quires more  meetings  or  services  on  the  part  of 
our  churches,  and  more  workers  to  conduct 
them ;  and  it  is  a  duty,  to  which  in  every  great 
city  the  Church  must  address  itself. 

As  worshippers  of  a  God  whom  we  know 
to  be  love,  we  have  even  more  reason  than 
the  Hebrews  for  insisting  on  the  holiday  as  a 
divine  interest.  Indeed,  when  so  many  of  our 
people  work  in  factories,  offices,  furnaces, 
mines  and  similar  shut-in  employments,  there 
is  far  more  necessity  for  securing  free  hours 
that  can  be  spent  in  the  open,  than  in  agricul- 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT    85 

tural  Israel.  The  Saturday  or  midweek  half- 
holiday  seems  as  religious  a  cause  for  us  to 
champion  as  the  ancient  sabbath-rest.  If  we 
can  secure  regularly  a  half-holiday  for  pleas- 
ure, we  shall  have  more  reason  to  claim  the 
Sunday  for  religion. 

And  this  brings  us  to  our  Christian  task  of 
transforming  the  holiday  into  a  holyday.  Let 
us  take  our  stand  with  St.  Paul  and  remind 
ourselves  that  as  followers  of  Jesus  our  whole 
life  is  to  be  devoted  to  Him.  One  day  cannot 
be  more  sacred  than  another,  for  all  are  to  be 
given  exclusively  to  God's  will.  We  cannot 
speak,  therefore,  of  something  as  being  wrong 
for  us  on  Sunday,  but  right  on  Monday.  We 
must  make  the  best  use  of  each  day,  and  any- 
thing less  than  the  best  is  wrong,  whether  it 
be  week-day  or  Sunday;  and  the  best,  as  we 
see  it  under  Christ's  guidance,  is  right  on  all 
days.  It  is  lawful  sabbath-day  or  any  other 
day  to  do  good. 

But  here  is  a  day  that  has  been  won  as  a 
holiday  by  the  Christians  of  the  past,  and  that 
is  hallowed  by  the  remembrance  of  Jesus's 
victory  and  called  "The  Lord's  Day."  There 
is  no  divine  law  telling  us  how  to  spend  it,  for 


86    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

we  are  not  servants  but  friends.  We  have  to 
ask  ourselves  as  intelligent  and  thoughtful  sons 
of  God  how  we  can  most  appropriately  use  the 
day.  Instead  of  discussing  what  is  right  or 
wrong  on  Sunday,  let  us  think  of  what  is  ap- 
propriate or  inappropriate. 

The  God  to  whom  we  keep  the  day  holy  is 
called  "Father."  His  festival  day  seems  fit- 
tingly to  be  a  family  day.  There  are  few 
enough  contacts  between  parents  and  children, 
between  the  members  of  the  household.  Wliat 
more  suitable  to  the  day  than  some  simple 
family  gathering  for  worship — Bible  reading, 
prayer,  perhaps  hymn-singing?  Where  there 
are  young  children,  this  is  surely  the  day  when 
father  and  mother  should  try  to  pass  on  to 
them  their  inheritance  of  Christian  faith.  No 
Church  and  Sunday  School  training  can  take 
the  place  of  home  lessons  in  religion.  The 
most  delightful  books,  the  best-loved  stories, 
the  most-prized  walks  with  a  usually  busy 
father,  ought  to  be  kept  to  mark  this  as  the 
best  day  in  the  week. 

Again,  this  God  to  whom  we  hallow  the 
holiday  has  brought  us  into  a  larger  family 
—"the    household    of    faith."      That    family 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT    87 

gathers  in  the  house  of  God  and  enters  col- 
lectively into  the  Father's  larger  life.  Re- 
ligion will  not  long  remain  vital  in  the  life 
that  loses  touch  with  fellow  believers.  It  is 
all  very  well  to  say  that  we  are  as  near 
to  God  under  the  blue  sky  as  in  a  Church 
building,  that  we  can  worship  just  as  well 
by  doing  some  quiet  thinking  as  by  singing 
hymns  and  listening  to  prayers  and  ser- 
mons, but  the  fact  remains  that  th^  thought 
of  God  fades  out _oOhe  heart  that  ^^^^^^  not 
restamped  with  it  by  the  weekly  reminder 
of  Him  in  the  house  set  apart  for  His  wor- 
ship. A  special  day  is  observed  by  something 
appropriate  to  its  meaning.  The  Fourth  of 
July  demands  a  patriotic  observance  as  the 
nation's  birthday.  Sunday  requires  a  Church 
service  as  the  Church's  birthday,  the  anni- 
versary of  its  awakening  to  the  joyous  faith 
in  love's  victory  in  Christ  and  to  the  sense  of 
its  spiritual  power  through  sharing  His  Spirit 
of  love  to  set  up  His  Kingdom  in  the  whole 
world's  life. 

Above  all,  if  we  make  the  day  holy  to  the 
Father  of  Jesus  Christ,  His  special  interest 
is   in   His  most  needy   children.     His   chief 


88    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

delight  is  not  in  the  ninety  and  nine  just 
persons  who  are  already  conscientious,  but 
in  the  sinner  who  is  led  to  repentance,  in  the 
child  who  is  brought  to  dedicate  his  life  to 
righteousness.  Unless  we  provide  to  the  ex- 
tent of  our  abilities  for  some  work  on  Sunday 
for  the  benefit  of  others  who  need  our  sym- 
pathy, our  knowledge,  our  faith,  we  do  not 
spend  it  suitably  as  the  day  of  the  Lord  Jesus,/' 
the  day  we  hallow  to  His  God  and  Father. 

Because  we  are  under  no  Sabbath  law 
each  of  us  must  settle  for  himself,  as  an  in- 
dependent and  responsible  child  of  God,  how 
he  shall  keep  the  day  holy.  John  was  "in  the 
Spirit  on  the  Lord's  day"  and  had  certain 
great  experiences;  but  had  James  or  Peter 
or  Paul  been  in  the  Spirit  on  the  Lord's  day 
on  Patmos  their  ways  of  receiving  and 
showing  that  same  Spirit  would  have  been  cer- 
tainly different.  Not  by  following  prescribed 
rules,  but  by  surrendering  ourselves  thought- 
fully and  conscientiously  to  the  control  of  the 
Spirit  of  Christ,  shall  we  discover  how  to  make 
our  Sundays  most  godlike,  labour-free  days. 
We  shall  differ  widely;  there  will  be  the  unity 
of  the  Spirit. 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT    89 


And  the  uses  to  which  we  put  our  Sundays 
{ -are  searching  tests  of  what  we  are.  Those  who 
devote  them  largely  to  physical  exercise,  dis- 
close themselves  as  seeking  primarily  to  be 
healthy  animals.  Those  who  set  them  apart 
for  a  good  time,  write  themselves  down  as  car- 
ing most  for  pleasure.  Those  who  use  them 
for  friendly  visits,  announce  themselves  as  so- 
ciably minded  men  and  women  of  this  world, 
whose  horizons  are  bounded  and  whose  hearts 
are  satisfied  with  the  associations  of  earth. 
Those  who  deliberately  devote  the  day  to  the 
Father  in  heaven,  to  binding  their  homes  to 
Him,  to  contributing  their  presence  to  the  wor- 
shipping company  of  His  children,  to  accom- 
plishing some  part  of  His  purpose  for  breth- 
ren who  need  what  they  can  supply,  judge 
themselves  children  of  God,  unsatisfied  with- 
out a  glimpse  of  the  King  in  His  beauty  and 
of  the  land  of  far  distances.  The  judgment  is 
all  the  more  significant  in  an  age  like  ours 
when  there  is  no  strong  social  pressure  on  us 
to  hallow  the  day,  but  rather  the  reverse;  and 
when  we  frankly  recognise  that  we  are  under 
no  divine  commandment,  but  acting  freely  as 
trusted  friends  of  Jesus.     The  holiday  comes 


90    THE  TEN  C0MMANDMENTS 

to  us  as  a  bequest  from  the  believers  of  the 
past  who  won  it  for  humanity's  sake,  and  who 
hallowed  it  as  the  Lord's  day  for  Christ's  sake; 
and  the  use  to  which  we  put  it  makes  it  a  judg- 
ment day,  our  judgment  of  what  we  are  and 
seek. 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT 

Exodus  xx:  12:    "Honour  thy  father  and  thy  mother." 

.  No  one  chooses  his  parents ;  and  in  a  demo- 
cratic age,  when  the  freedom  of  the  individual 
to  select  his  own  rulers  and  determine  for 
himself  those  to  whom  he  will  give  his  loyalty 
and  obedience  is  a  fundamental  principle,  there 
is  a  very  different  attitude  towards  hereditary 
obligations  than  under  a  monarchy.  Parents 
are  frequently  regarded  as  an  accident^  of 
birth.  Some  people  are  quite  certain  that,  had 
they  picked  their  own  father  and  mother,  they 
would  have  made  other  selections.  They  find 
themselves  heirs  of  an  undesirable  inheritance. 
They  trace  the  pedigree  of  their  most  hamper- 
ing characteristics,  their  least  likable  faults, 
their  unloveliest  weaknesses,  directly  to  their 
ancestors.  William  Dean  Howells  has  writ- 
ten: 

"That  swollen  paunch  you  are  doomed  to  bear 
Your  gluttonous  grandsire  used  to  wear; 
93 


94    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

That  tongue  at  once  so  light  and  dull. 
Wagged  in  your  grandma's  empty  skull; 
That  leering  of  the  sensual  eye. 
Your  father,  when  he  came  to  die. 
Left  you  alone;  and  that  cheap  flirt. 
Your  mother,  gave  you  from  the  dirt 
The  simper  which  she  used  upon 
So  many  men  ere  he  was  won.'* 

And  even  where  the  gifts  of  heredity  are 
prized,  there  is  often  a  maladjustment  of  tem- 
geraments  to  each  other  that  assures  almost 
constant  friction  between  parents  and  chil- 
dren.  Sometimes  it  is  due  to  the  utter  unlike- 
ness  of  children  to  parents ;  with  features  and 
voice  and  walk  that  duplicate  father's  or 
mother's,  the  nature  within  appears  to  have 
been  born  of  some  other  spirit  altogether. 
Of tener  it  is  their  very  likeness  in  disposition 
that  produces  disagreement.  Father  and  son, 
mother  and  daughter,  admirable  in  themselves, 
are  too  alike  to  get  on  well  together.  Two 
strong  wills  are  nearly  foredoomed  to  clash ; 
two  impulsive  natures  are  well  nigh  certain 
to  produce  in  each  other  an  explosion  of  feel- 
ing and  temper;  two  reserved  people  are  all 
but  predestined  to  mutual  misunderstandings. 
George  Eliot,  that  keen  analyst  of  the  effects 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT    95 

of  characters  upon  each  other,  says  in  describ- 
ing the  resemblance  and  difference  between 
Adam  Bede  and  his  mother:  "Family  like- 
ness has  often  a  deep  sadness  in  it.  Nature, 
that  great  tragic  dramatist,  knits  us  together 
by  bone  and  muscle,  and  divides  us  by  the 
subtler  web  of  our  brains;  blends  yearning 
and  repulsion ;  and  ties  us  by  our  heart-strings 
to  the  beings  that  jar  us  at  every  movement. 
We  hear  a  voice  with  the  very  cadence  of  our 
own  uttering  the  thoughts  we  despise;  we  see 
eyes — ah!  so  like  our  mother's — averted  from 
us  in  cold  alienation;  and  our  last  darling 
child  startles  us  with  the  air^and^  gestures  of 
the  sister  we  parted  from  in  bitterness  long 
years  ago.  The  father  to  whom  we  owe  our 
best  heritage — the  mechanical  instinct,  the 
keen  sensibility  to  harmony,  the  unconscious 
skill  of  the  modelling  hand — galls  us,  and  puts 
us  to  shame  by  his  daily  errors;  the  long-lost 
mother,  whose  face  we  begin  to  see  in  the 
glass  as  our  wrinkles  come,  once  fretted  our 
young  souls  with  her  anxious  humours  and 
irrational  persistence.'* 

We  provide  for  divorces  between  husbands 
and  wives,  who  cannot  endure  living  together ; 


96    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

is  it  reasonable  that  there  should  be  no  repu- 
table way  by  which  sons  and  daughters  can 
free  themselves  from  obligations  to  parents 
whom  they  discover  to  be  intolerable? 

The  difficulties,  of  maintaining  the  proper 
relations  between  children  and  parents  are 
vastly  increased  among  ourselves  by  two  fac- 
tors. One  is  the^  change  in  social  status  due  to 
the  acquisition  of  wealthjorjof  education.  Son 
or  daughter  find  themselves  living  in  a  dif- 
ferent world  from  that  to  which  father  and 
mother  are  accustomed,  and  in  which  they  will 
continue  to  live  so  long  as  life  lasts.  It  is  a 
world  of  other  ideas  and  other  ideals;  several 
centuries  seem  to  lie  between  two  immediately 
touching  generations.  A  great  gulf  divides 
their  feehngs,  their  sympathies,  their  opinions, 
their  convictions,  even  their  consciences. 
Sometimes  we  should  call  the  older  genera- 
tion better  than  the  younger ;  as  often,  perhaps, 
the  children  are  better  than  their  parents.  But 
no  matter  with  which  the  advantage  lies,  the 
difficulty  of  preserving  the  right  relations  be- 
tween the  two  becomes  acute.  We  can  all 
think  of  tragic  situations  where  father  and 
mother  have  toiled  and  saved,  and  given  their 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT    97 

jbhildren  advantages  of  culture  and  social  posi- 
tion they  never  themselves  possessed,  only  to 
have  a  chasm  sunder  son  or  daughter  from 
them. 

The  other  is  the  change  in  country  that 
works  such  havoc  with  the  family  ties  in  hosts 
of  our  immigrant  homes.  Children,  born  here 
or  brought  here  young,  grow  up  in  our  atmos- 
phere, are  trained  in  our  schools,  imbibe  our 
ideals  and  find  themselves  thousands  of  miles 
away  in  sentiment  and  thought  and  faith  from 
their  parents.  Very  often  they  know  far  more, 
have  much  keener  intuitions  and  brighter 
minds,  are  actually  earning  more  at  eighteen 
than  father  and  mother  can  earn,  and  instead 
of  children  looking  up  to  and  being  led  by  par- 
ents, the  relationship  is  reversed,  and  the  chil- 
dren lead  them  into  the  unfamiliar  ways  of 
the  new  land  of  their  adoption.  It  is  not  only 
that  son  and  daughter  speak  naturally  a  dif- 
ferent language  and  can  hardly  express  them- 
selves in  the  parental  tongue,  but  that  they 
are  different  in  mind  and  heart,  in  the  very 
structure  and  fibre  of  their  beings.  Home 
tragedies  frequently  result;  and  one  scarcely 
knows  which  is  the  more  to  blame,  or  whether 


98    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

either  is  really  blameworthy  when  circum- 
stances have  so  widely  separated  the  two  gen- 
erations. 
\^  /'To  what  extent  can  we  apply  a  command- 
(^ent,  devised  for  tribesmen  among  whom  sons 
and  daughters  grew  up  to  follow  the  callings 
and  repeat  almost  exactly  the  careers  of  their 
ancestors,  to  conditions  where  the  lives  of  chil- 
dren are  so  totally  unlike  those  in  which  their 
parents  were  reared? 

Has  it  not  been  a  cardinal  error  of  our  in- 
dividualism to  think  so  often  of  our  obliga- 
tions as  voluntary?  Many  men  regard  civic 
duties  as  purely  optional;  they  may  be  in- 
terested in  politics,  they  do  not  feel  that  they 
must.  We  may  burden  ourselves  with  the 
woes  of  our  brethren  in  war-stricken  Europe; 
but  we  are  sensible  of  no  irresistible  moral  com- 
pulsion. The  more  social  conscience  into  which 
God  is  trying  to  educate  us  will  certainly  rec- 
ognise obligations  in  many  more  relationships 
which  we  have  had  no  choice  whatsoever  in 
forming.  Responsibilities  are  almost  never 
willingly  and  freely  chosen;  they  are  thrust 
upon  us.  And  family  ties,  with  whose  forma- 
tion we  had  nothing  to  do,  are  just  those  best 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT   99 

fitted  to  stretch  our  consciences  and  develop 
us  into  the  larger,  more  brotherly-minded  chil- 
dren of  God  it  is  our  Father's  main  aim  to 
produce. 

Happily  very  few  of  us  wish  to  exchange 
our  parents  for  others.  We  may  see  faults 
in  them;  for  love  need  not  be  blind;  but  we 
see  infinitely  more  to  love  and  revere.  We 
cannot  forget  that  in  our  helpless  infancy  it 
was  their  devotion  that  watched  our  every 
breath,  kept  us  alive  through  numberless 
childish  ills,  soothed  our  small  but  very  real 
sorrows,  planned  our  happiness,  bore  in  pa- 
tience with  our  early  but  often  precociously 
mature  iniquities,  thought  us  wonderful 
when  to  all  other  eyes  we  were  very  ordinary 
children,  discovered  music  in  our  voices, 
wisdom  in  our  sayings,  beauty  in  our  faces, 
saintliness  in  our  actions  and  a  charm  in  our 
companionship,  when  to  everybody  else  we 
were  shrill-toned,  stupid  or  forward,  plain, 
mischievous,  troublesome  specimens  of  yoimg 
humanity.  They  may  have  spoiled  us;  they 
may  have  disciplined  us  unwisely ;  there  may  be 
a  great  many  things  we  wish  they  had  done 
or  had  left  undone  for  us  in  our  childhood; 


100  THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

but  they  loved  us.  There  is  probably  not  a 
Jife  here  behind  which  does  not  lie  very  gen- 
uine parental  sacrifice;  and  behind  many  of  us 
lies  a  sacrifice  comparable  only  to  that  supreme 
Self -offering  on  Calvary.  Father  and  mother 
scarcely  had  a  thought  in  which  we  did  not 
occur,  made  no  plan  that  did  not  include  our 
welfare  or  pleasure,  forwent  many  an  interest- 
ing amusement  and  denied  themselves  many 
much  desired  benefits  that  they  might  give  us 
advantages,  and  day  and  night  freely  spent 
and  were  spent  for  our  sakes.  Not  to  treat 
them  with  the  utmost  deference,  not  to  yield 
them  heartiest  and  most  considerate  affection, 
is  to  show  ourselves  contemptible  ingrates. 

Many  persons  are  puzzled  by  finding  a  spe- 
cial reward  attached  to  this  commandment. 
Paul  calls  it  "the  first  commandment  with 
promise."  Why  should  honouring  father  and 
mother  be  recompensed  more  than  fidelity  to 
God  or  remembering  the  Sabbath?  It  seems 
less  necessary  to  offer  an  inducement  to  keep 
this  commandment  because  it  is  easier  to  many 
of  us  than  some  of  the  rest.  And  is  it  true 
that  those  who  respect  their  parents  live  longer 
than  those  who  do  not?    Rewards  in  the  Bible 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT  101 

are  al way s_ results.  This  is  not  a  bribe  to  entice 
^s  to  fulfil  our^lial  duties;  this  is  a  state- 
ment by  the  law-giver  of  the  experience  of 
men,  that  children  who  defer  to  the  maturer 
judgment  of  their  elders  avoid  the  life-shorten- 
ing follies  of  youth.  It  is  a  common-sense 
statement  which  is  borne  out  by  the  experience 
of  the  race  in  every  generation. 

It  seems  slightly  unfair  that  the  Deca- 
logue should  contain  a  commandment  for  chil- 
dren, but  none  for  parents.  Paul,  when  he 
writes  "Children  obey  your  parents  in  the 
Lord,"  at  once  adds,  "And  ye  fathers  provoke 
not  your  children  to  wrath,  but  nurture  them 
in  the  chastening  and  admonition  (the  disci- 
pline and  training)  of  the  Lord."  One  would 
like  to  insert  Commandment  No,  5  Aj  "Fath- 
ers and  mothers  prove  yourself  honourable." 
Most  parents  receive  all  the  respect  they  de- 
serve ;  and  there  are  some  who  make  it  exceed- 
ingly difficult  for  their  children  to  reverence 
them.  Not  to  speak  of  positive  wickedness, 
there  are  so  many  whose  smallness  or  flippancy 
or  silliness  or  emptiness  do  not  render  them 
easily  honoured.  There  is  something,  further, 
in  the  spirit  of  our  age  that  has  altered  parents 


102    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

as  profoundly  as  in  other  ways  it  has  altered 
children.  It  is  a  common  remark  that  there 
are  no  more  old  people.  One  very  rarely 
meets  man  or  woman  to  whom  one  could  apply 
the  adjective  "venerable,"  or  who  would  them- 
selves like  to  have  such  an  adjective  applied  to 
them.  Our  grandmothers  used  to  acquiesce  in 
old  age,  often  accept  it  as  a  proud  distinction, 
and  both  dressed  and  acted  the  part.  Their 
coevals  to-day  take  the  utmost  pains  not  to 
seem  elderly.  Perhaps  the  advances  of  medical 
science,  with  its  devices  for  counteracting  some 
aaasfrof  the  crippling  infirmities  of  age,  may  ac- 
count in  part  for  the  change.  Surely  it  is  right 
that  men  and  women  should  keep  themselves 
limber  and  active  and  alive  in  interest  that  they 
may  be  useful  as  long  as  they  possibly  can.  But 
is  there  anything  more  deadening  to  respect 
than  the  silly  effort  to  appear  more  youthful 
than  one  really  is?  It  is  a  fine  thing  for  par- 
ents to  make  themselves  companions  and  com- 
rades of  their  children;  but  "chumminess"  won 
at  the  cost  of  reverence  is  a  questionable  gain 
for  both  children  and  parents. 

To  be  sure,  parents  do  not  want  to  be  ask- 
ing themselves,  "How  can  I  make  my  children 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT  103 

honour  me?"  "When  any  of  us  begin?  to  think 
about  his  dignity,  he  becomes  inevitably  less 
dignified.  Honour  comes  without  seeking  to 
those  whose  purposes  are  sufficiently  high, 
whose  lives  are  devoted  to  aims  men  cannot 
help  respecting,  whose  consciences  and  convic- 
tions lift  them  above  things  petty  and  con- 
temptible. True  comradeship  of  the  closest 
sort  need  not  in  the  least  do  away  with  unfail- 
ing respect,  but  rather  enhances  it  when  father 
and  son,  mother  and  daughter  are  companions 
in  that  which  is  in  itself  exalting.  And  the 
surest  road  to  true  honour  lies  in  so  living  with 
the  Most  High,  and  so  taking  children  into  the 
life  with  Him,  that  their  thoughts  of  God,  their 
hallowed  thoughts,  will  naturally  include  you. 
Thomas  Carlyle  exclaims  with  heartfelt  devo- 
tion: "Oh,  pious  mother,  kind,  good,  brave 
and  truthful  soul  as  I  have  ever  found  in  this 
world,  your  poor  Tom  has  fallen  very  lonely, 
very  lame  and  broken  in  this  pilgrimage  of  his ; 
and  you  cannot  help  by  a  kind  word  any  more. 
But  from  your  grave  in  Ecclefechan  Kirkyard 
yonder  you  bid  him  trust  in  God ;  and  that  also 
he  will  try  to  do,  for  the  conquest  of  the  world 
and  of  death  and  hell  does  verily  lie  in  that.'* 


104    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson  writes  to  his  father: 
"I  wish  that  I  might  become  a  man  worth  talk- 
ing of,  if  it  were  only  that  you  should  not  have 
thrown  away  your  pains;"  and  Mrs.  Napier 
says  of  the  son:  "In  the  Vailima  prayers  I 
seem  to  hear  again  an  old  melody  that  I  know 
well — the  echo  of  his  father's  words  and  daily 
devotionjs."  How  many  of  the  boys  and  girls 
of  this  congregation  hear  father  or  mother 
graying  with  and  for  them?  How  many  will 
link  father's  and  mother's  name  in  reverence 
their  longest  day  with  that  of  God,  because, 
through  what  they  have  taught  them  and 
through  what  they  have  themselves  been 
to  them,  they  have  come  to  know  and  honour 
the  Most  Highest? 

The  Bible  has  a  method  of  placing  our 
duties  around  us  in  a  series  of  concentric 
circles;  and,  by  training  us  to  be  faithful  to 
those  in  the  smallest  and  most  immediate 
circles,  of  educating  us  to  reach  out  and  include 
the  wider.  The  child's  first  circle  is  the  home 
and  the  lesson  to  be  learned  there  is  honour. 
Not  obedience  merely,  but  the  habit  of  looking 
up  to  others  with  consideration  and  respect  for 
them  as  better  than  we,  with  deference  to  their 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT  105 

judgment  and  wishes — that  is  our  first  devel- 
opment in  character.  Unless  it  is  learned  in  the 
first  circle,  it  is  likely  never  to  be  learned ;  and 
the  life  that  never  considers  others,  respects 
them  and  defers  to  their  wishes  is  a  pitiably- 
distorted  life.  Carlyle  was  describing  a  Scot- 
tish rather  than  an  American  home  when  he 
wrote  of  his  early  days:  "An  inflexible  ele- 
ment of  authority  surrounded  us  all.  We  felt 
from  the  first  (a  useful  thing)  that  our  own 
wish  had  often  nothing  to  do  in  the  matter." 
We  want  to  educate  not  to  break  the  will; 
and  we  want  the  co-operation,  the  willing 
agreement  of  children,  in  what  we  plan  for 
them.  But  is  there  not  an  opposite  extreme  in 
many  homes  among  ourselves,  where  children 
are  allowed  to  exercise  their  wishes  and  whims, 
without  being  taught  to  consider  and  respect 
the  wiser  and  maturer  wishes  of  their  elders? 
Children  who  are  not  trained  to  consider — and 
that  means  to  respect  and  defer  to  the  desires 
of  their  parents — grow  up  warped  towards  sel- 
fishness, to  become  unfit,  largely  because  of 
their  lack  of  considerateness,  for  marriage  and 
friendship  and  all  the  social  relationships  of 
life. 


106    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

A  wider  circle  which  surrounds  the  home  is 
the  land  with  its  laws.  "Honour  thy  father 
and  thy  mother"  is  succeeded  by  "honour  the 
king" — respect  constituted  authority,  A  home 
which  does  not  enforce  its  demands  presents 
the  state  with  lawless  citizens.  Many  of  those 
who  deplore  want  of  regard  for  law  and  order 
are  producing  little  anarchists  in  their  own 
households.  Reverence  for  the  will  of  the 
family,  a  will  not  arbitrarily  and  despotically 
imposed,  but  established  by  wise  love  over  chil- 
dren who  so  far  as  possible  are  taught  to  see  its 
wisdom  and  to  feel  its  love,  is  the  source  of  re- 
spect for  the  authority  of  a  democracy,  where 
the  individual  must  submit  himself  to  the  will 
of  the  community  which  he  is  given  his  full 
share  in  forming. 

And  outside  the  circle  of  one's  country  lies 
the  more  inclusive  circle  which  embraces  the 
whole  race.  If  the  first  commandment  we  learn 
to  fulfil  is  "Honour  thy  father  and  thy 
mother,"  the  last,  which  occupies  us  our  life 
long,  and  which  it  may  require  some  sections 
of  eternity  for  us  fully  to  master,  is :  "Honour 
all  men."  And  unless  in  childhood  we  have 
learned  to  look  up  to  somebody  and  have 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT  107 

caught  that  attitude  so  firmly  that  we  cannot 
be  bent  or  twisted  out  of  it  by  all  the  circum- 
stances of  life  that  tempt  us  to  look  do^vn  on 
men,  we  have  scant  chance  of  acquiring  it  later. 
We  are  debarred  from  intimacies  with  men; 
for  we  only  get  near  to  them  as  we  go  up  to 
them.  We  are  handicapped  in  our  sympathies, 
fOT_  sympathy  begins  with  appreciation — a 
form  of  honour.  We  are  likely  to  pass  our 
days  landlocked  in  a  little  puddle  of  our  own 
prejudices,  while  the  great  ocean  of  human  life 
lies  outside,  waiting  to  carry  us  to  its  many, 
many  shores.  We  are  seriously,  if  not  fatally, 
crippled  for  the  most  sacred  of  human  rela- 
tions— marriage;  for  wedded  happiness  can 
only  exist  between  two  mutally  reverencing 
beings.  The  word  "honour"  in  the  marriage 
service  is  fully  as  important  as  the  word  "love," 
and  there  can  be  no  love  worthy  the  name  with- 
out honour.  The  child  unschooled  to  honour 
father  and  mother  will  turn  out  the  husband 
or  wife  that  wrecks  a  home.  And  without  this 
fundamental  lesson  we  are  cut  off  from  all 
broadening  and  enriching  contacts  with  other 
people;  for  we  learn  from  them  only  as  we 
look  up  to  them;  we  draw  out  their  best  only 


108    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

as  we  approach  them  with  respect;  we  tempt 
them  to  show  us  their  sacred  things  only  as  we 
make  them  sure  that  whatever  is  prized  by 
them  will  be  invariably  revered  by  us.  Yes, 
the  source  of  all  helpful  and  happy  intercourse 
with  other  human  beings  whatsoever  lies  back 
in  this  primary  home  duty:  "Honour  thy 
father  and  thy  mother." 

And  the  circle  of  our  duties  does  not  stop 
with  men;  the  circumference  of  our  contacts 
goes  out  to  the  unseen  and  reaches  the  living 
God.  Goethe  makes  Faust  say:  "The  thrill 
of  awe  is  man's  best  quality."  Those  of  you 
who  have  seen  Raphael's  frescoes  in  the  Vati- 
can may  have  noticed  that  in  the  "Philosophi- 
cal School"  no  face  is  looking  up,  while  in  the 
"Theological  School"  {The  Disputa)  opposite, 
every  face  is  lifted.  No  man  ever  gets  closed 
to  God  save  as  he  goes  up  to  Him.  Those  who 
treat  the  Deity  with  the  familiarity  of  an  equal, 
or  even  venture  to  offer  him  their  distinguished 
patronage,  have  not  the  remotest  touch  with 
the  God  and  Father  of  Jesus  Christ.  Jesus 
dwelt  in  His  Father's  love,  but  He  said  "Hal- 
lowed be  Thy  name,"  "I  thank  Thee,  Father, 
Lord."    That  is  a  striking  saying  of  St.  Paul's, 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT  109 

"I  bow  my  knees  unto  the  Father,  of  whom 
every  fatherhood  in  heaven  and  on  earth  is 
named."  The  divine  name  is  conferred  on 
parents;  they  are  to  play  Providence  to  their 
children,  to  ban  or  bless  them.  They  are  to 
represent  the  Divine,  the  honourable  and  ador- 
able to  them.  Father  or  mother  who  do  not 
deserve  honour,  foster  irreligion  and  every 
other  unhappiness  in  a  child.  Children  who 
instinctively  look  up,  because  the  beings  they 
know  first  and  best  command  their  reverence, 
catch  the  attitude  of  spirit  within  whose  ken  in 
due  time  the  Divine  will  swim,  and  the  honour 
they  have  learned  to  give  those  who  bore  the 
fatherly  name  on  earth  will  give  itself  fully  to 
the  great  Father  of  all. 

"Honour  thy  father  and  mother  (which  is 
the  first  commandment  with  promise)  that  it 
may  be  well  with  thee,"  and  that  thy  days  may 
be  long  in  the  earth  with  its  enriching  human 
relations,  and  longer  still  in  the  heavens  with 
their  hallowed  fellowships  that  abide  forever. 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT 

Exodus  xx:1S:     "Thou  shall  not  Mil." 

There  is  almost  an  element  of  humour  in 
preaching  against  murder  to  a  congregation 
of  respectable  people  like  ourselves.  Did  we 
really  think  that  the  man  in  the  next  pew 
might  possibly  be  "a  gunman"  or  the  woman 
across  the  aisle  a  prospective  poisoner,  how 
very  uncomfortable  we  should  feel!  And  if 
the  preacher  should  say,  "I  have  a  special  word  ) 
this  morning  for  those  who  have  recently  mur- 
dered someone,"  we  should  look  about  us  with 
a  shudder,  and  wonder  what  sort  of  company 
we  had  got  into.  It  is  well  for  us  to  remember  \ 
that  there  are  Christian  congregations  in  some 
parts  of  the  world — in  Africa,  in  the  Island  of 
Formosa,  among  the  head  hunters  in  the  Phil- 
ippines— where  pillars  of  the  Church  are 
former  man-slayers.  From  the  beginning  the 
Gospel  of  Christ  has  not  hesitated  to  deal  with 
the  most  brutal  elements  of  mankind.    It  sur-  ' 

113 


114.    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

prises  us  to  hear  Peter  writing  in  His  first 
epistle:  "Let  none  of  you  suffer  as  a  mur- 
derer." How  could  Christians  need  any  such 
warning?  Think  out  of  what  stuff  the  apos- 
tles had  to  manufacture  Christians!  And  if 
murder  appears  to  be  so  unthinkable  to  us 
that  we  smile  at  the  thought  of  a  sermon 
preached  to  us  from  the  Sixth  Commandment, 
let  us  not  forget  that  we  owe  the  security  of  our 
own  lives  in  this  community  very  largely  to 
the  work  of  the  Christian  Church  in  the  past 
centuries,  and  to  the  prevalence  of  Christian 
ideals  and  sentiments  throughout  our  land  to- 
day. If  these  ideals  became  weaker  in  our 
own  city,  who  knows  what  an  increase  in  acts 
of  violence  we  should  witness?  Home  Mis- 
sions is  indirectly  the  most  profitable  form  of 
life  insurance. 

The  old  Jewish  legislation  took  cognizance 
of  forms  of  murder  other  than  deliberate  kill- 
ing. In  the  Book  of  Exodus  we  read:  "If  an 
ox  gore  a  man  or  a  woman  to  death,  the  ox 
shall  be  surely  stoned,  and  its  flesh  shall  not  be 
eaten;  but  the  owner  of  the  ox  shall  be  quit. 
But  if  the  ox  was  wont  to  gore  in  time  past, 
and  it  hath  been  testified  to  its  owner,  and  he 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT    115 

hath  not  kept  it  in,  but  it  hath  killed  a  man  or 
a  woman ;  the  ox  shall  be  stoned,  and  its  owner 
also  shall  be  put  to  death."  The  responsibility 
of  the  owners — be  they  stockholders,  or  direct- 
ors, or  managers — for  accidents,  when  they 
know  that  they  have  neglected  proper  precau- 
tions, is  the  modern  equivalent  of  that  ancient 
statute.  The  corporation,  which  in  its  eager- 
ness for  dividends  allows  grade-crossings  to 
remain,  or  to  remain  unguarded,  which  does 
not  introduce  safety-appliances,  which  breaks 
the  fire  laws  in  its  buildings,  which  permits  un- 
sanitary conditions  to  prevail  in  its  plant, 
which  caters  to  the  desire  for  speed  at  the  risk 
of  disaster,  which  fails  to  insist  on  constant  and 
careful  inspection  of  machinery,  workrooms, 
tracks,  bridges  and  the  like,  is  repeating  the 
same  perilous  experiment  of  leaving  a  dan- 
gerous ox  at  large.  Present-day  legislators 
are  trying  to  find  a  way  by  which  they  can 
make  someone  as  personally  liable  as  these  an- 
cient lawgivers  held  the  ox's  owner.  <  Every 
preventable  accident  ought  to  mean  that  some- 
body will  be  punished;  life  cannot  otherwise 
be  adequately  protected. 

There  are  still  other  and  subtler  ways  of 


116    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

committing  murder.  \  Work  may  be  paid  so 
poorly  that  life  cannot  be  supported  on  the 
wages.y  Long  ago,  Tom  Hood  wrote  The 
Song  of  the  Shirt: 

Work — ^work — work. 

Till  the  brain  begins  to  swim; 
Work — work — work. 

Till  the  eyes  are  heavy  and  dim! 
Seam  and  gusset  and  band. 

Band  and  gusset  and  seam, 
Till  over  the  buttons  I  fall  asleep. 

And  sew  them  on  in  a  dream! 

Work — work — ^work ! 

My  labour  never  flags; 
And  what  are  its  wages?     A  bed  of  straw — 

A  crust  of  bread — and  rags. 
That  shattered  roof — and  this  naked  floor — 

A  table — a  broken  chair — 
And  a  wall  so  blank,  my  shadow  I  thank 

For  sometimes  falling  there. 

Oh  God !  that  bread  should  be  so  dear. 
And  flesh  and  blood  so  cheap ! 

And  where  human  lives  are  used  up  in  our 
commercial  machinery,  it  is  not  easy  to  fix  the 
blame.  If  we  hold  the  employer,  he  will  point 
out  that  his  profits  are  not  unreasonable,  and 
that  he  is  forced  to  keep  his  prices  down  by 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT    117 

keen  competition;  if  we  hold  the  department 
store,  where  the  goods  are  sold,  they,  too,  will 
remind  us  that  business  risks  are  great,  and  the 
pressure  of  rivals  difficult  to  meet.  The  fact 
is  that  there  is  guilt  which  w^e  all — public, 
middlemen,  manufacturers — must  share,  and 
which,  because  our  part  of  it  seems  a  trifling 
fraction,  we  dare  not  minimize.  The  whole  sub- 
ject of  **the  living  wage"  is  complicated,  and 
must  be  handled  with  painstaking  study;  but 
it  is  for  us  as  Christians  to  insist  that  it  shall 
be  handled,  that  it  is  the  community's  duty — 
our  bounden  duty,  yours  and  mine— to  see  to 
it  that  labour  is  properly  paid.     "Thou  shalt 

^tkni."^  ~" 

Or  again,  work  may  not  be  obtainable,  and 
starvation  may  face  a  willing  toiler  who  can- 
not find  employment.  We  believe  in  the  right 
to  live ;  we  have  not  been  as  accustomed  to  as- 
sert the  right  to  obtain  the  means  to  live,  the 
right  to  work.  When  industries  are  affected 
by  a  world  catastrophe  such  as  that  which  is  at 
present  convulsing  Europe,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  there  should  be  many  thousands  of  unem- 
ployed men  and  women;  but  we  have  to  con- 
front the  situation  that  without  any  such  dis- 


118    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

aster  there  is  normally  a  large  number  of  work- 
less  people  every  year  among  us.  We  have 
never  thought  that  it  was  anybody's  obligation 
to  find  them  work ;  they  were  expected  to  seek 
it  for  themselves;  and  that  was  much  more 
possible  in  our  less  crowded  days.  With  the 
growth  of  the  social  conscience  and  the  pres- 
sure of  our  vaster  population  we  are  commenc- 
ing to  feel  that  it  is  the  community's  duty  to 
assist  people  to  obtain  employment.  The  prob- 
lem is  exceedingly  difficult;  among  the  unem- 
ployed there  are  always  loafers,  incompetents, 
and  ne'er-do-weels ;  men  trained  to  one  line  of 
labour  cannot  readily  be  shifted  to  another; 
many  jobs  are  necessarily  temporary,  and  la- 
bourers must  move  about  if  they  are  to  keep 
employed.  Some  of  our  churches — our  own, 
for  instance — have  not  been  able  to  solve  the 
much  simpler  problem  of  getting  churchless 
ministers  and  ministerless  churches  together; 
and  the  countrywide  and  worldwide  problem  of 
unemployment  is  bewilderingly  difficult.  But 
its  solution  will  be  forthcoming  only  as  our  con- 
sciences insist  that  social  machinery  shall  be 
devised  by  which  no  willing  worker  need  re- 
main idle.    It  may  not  offer  him  the  position 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT    119 

he  would  like,  but  it  will  guarantee  him  and 
his  a  livelihood,  provided  he  is  not  too  lazy  to 
do  a  reasonable  amount  of  hard  labour.  To 
the  end  of  time  the  stimulus  of  hunger  may- 
have  to  be  resorted  to  in  the  case  of  the  slug- 
gard, and  we  have  Scriptural  authority  for 
such  pressure  in  the  apostle's  statement:  "If 
any  will  not  work,  neither  let  him  eat";  but 
where  any  will  work,  the  ancient  command- 
ment is  addressed  to  us:  "Thou  shalt  not 
kill." 

Two,  often  debated,  questions  are  raised  in 
our  minds  by  this  injunction — capital  pun- 
ishment and  war.  To  be  sure,  the  command-] 
ment  did  not  seem  to  those  to  whom  it  was 
given  to  interfere  with  either.  The  death  pen- 
alty is  prescribed  by  Israel's  lawgivers  for  sev- 
eral offences,  and  Israel's  greatest  saints  were 
frequently  redoubtable  warriors.  But  "time 
makes  ancient  good  uncouth,"  and  we  are  not 
living  under  the  law  of  Moses,  but  under  the 
Spirit  of  Jesus. 

The  Christian's  interest  in  the  treatment  of 
the  wrong-doer  is  not  retribution — life  for  life ; 
nor  is  it  the  protection  of  society  by  vindicat- 
ing the  sanctity  of  law  and  making  a  deterrent 


120    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

example  of  the  criminal.  These  were  Old  Tes- 
tament interests:  "Whoso  sheddeth  man's 
blood,  by  man  shall  his  blood  be  shed;  for  in 
the  image  of  God  made  He  man."  But,  "For- 
give us  our  debts  as  we  forgive  our  debtors"  is 
the  prayer  Jesus  puts  on  the  lips  of  Christian 
society.  We  are  to  be  merciful  as  our  God  is 
merciful,  just  as  He  is  just.  His  mercy  is 
transforming;  His  justice  is  redemptive.  His 
love  is  no  good-natured  sentiment  that  allows 
itself  to  be  imposed  on,  but  a  passionate  devo- 
tion that  does  not  cease  to  strive  to  make  His 
children  righteous.  One  who  has  deliberately 
taken  another's  life  cannot  be  left  where  he 
may  do  the  like  again,  nor  can  he  be  allowed 
to  remain  without  the  severest  discipline  re- 
quisite to  give  him  a  right  conscience,  self-con- 
trol and  a  brotherly  heart.  But  to  put  him  in 
an  electric  chair  is  simply  a  short  and  easy 
way  for  society  to  rid  itself  of  a  menace,  and 
to  absolve  itself  from  attempting  the  self-sac- 
rificing labour  necessary  to  make  over  a  mur- 
derer  into  a  child  of  God.  "He  is  faithful 
,  < (^^'  and  just  to  forgive  us  our  sin  and  to  cleanse 
fj^.  us  from  all  unrighteousness.    Be  ye  therefore 

./*-^  (      merciful^  as  your  Father  is  merciful.  "^^^.^Llt  ^:i^ 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT    121 

Nor  can  war  ever  commend  itself  to  the 
Christian  conscience.  How  can  anyone  point 
a  rifle,  or  drop  a  bomb,  or  plant  a  mine,  "in 
the  name  of  Jesus"  ?  And  it  is  written,  "What- 
soever ye  do,  in  word  or  in  deed,  do  all  in  the 
name  of  the  Lord  Jesus."  What  we  cannot 
do  in  His  name,  we  are  not  to  do  at  all. 

But  we  must  remember  an  expression  which 
Jesus  used  in  connection  with  His  command, 
"Swear  not  at  all."  He  was  insisting  that 
among  Christians  a  man's  word  should  be  so 
reHable  that  all  oaths  would  be  superfluous, 
and  He  said  "Whatsoever  is  more  cometh  of 
evil"  meaning  that  in  an  evil  world  an  oath 
might  be  expedient,  but  must  be  recognised  as 
due  to  evil5^  War  cometh  of  evil,  and  as  Chris- 
tians we  must  see  to  it  that  we  do  nothing  to 
make  it  come.  But  when  war  comes  upon  a^ 
land,  there  is  nothing  for  Christians  but  to  take 
arms  and  do  their  part  in  defending  themselves 
and  theirs  from  attack.  We  cannot  be  saved 
from  evil  until  all  others  are  saved  with  us; 
and  while  evil  persists,  driving  men  to  strife, 
it  is  not  the  part  of  Christian  love,  either  to  the 
invaders  or  to  those  who  look  to  us  for  protec- 
tion, to  let  the  assailants  wreak  their  purpose 


122    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

upon  us.  But  let  us  make  clear  that  slaughter 
of  our  brethren  is  inherently  incompatible  with 
the  mind  of  Christ ;  it  cometh  only  of  evil. 

In  a  world  like  ours  we  often  face  merely 
a  choice  of  evils ;  neither  alternative  is  entirely 
Christian.  In  1861  our  fathers  faced  the  issue 
of  slavery  or  war;  and  to-day  few  men,  South 
or  North,  regret  that  war  was  chosen,  the  issue 
settled,  and  slavery  banished  from  the  land. 
Our  brethren  overseas  have  been  confronted 
by  what  seemed  to  them  a  similar  choice  of 
evils;  it  is  not  for  us  to  judge  them,  that  we 
be  not  judged;  but  to  hope  and  pray  that  this 
frightful  wholesale  killing  will  once  and  for 
all  relegate  war  to  the  class  of  unthinkable  so- 
lutions of  differences  of  opinion,  as  among  our- 
selves the  duel  is  gone  forever. 

Jesus  dealt  explicitly  with  this  ancient  com- 
mandment. "Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said  to 
them  of  old  time.  Thou  shalt  not  kill ;  and  who- 
soever shall  kill  shall  be  in  danger  of  the  judg- 
ment ;  but  I  say  unto  you,  that  every  one  who 
is  angry  with  his  brother  shall  be  in  danger  of 
the  judgment;  and  whosoever  shall  say  to  his 
brother,  Raca  (good-for-nothing),  shall  be  in 
danger  of  the  council ;  and  whosoever  shall  say, 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT   123 

Thou  fool  (worthless  wretch),  shall  be  in  dan- 
ger of  the  hell  of  fire."  Jesus  is,  of  course,  not 
giving  a  new  law  that  is  to  be  enacted  into 
statutes,  as  the  Mosaic  commandments  were 
made  the  common  law  of  Israel.  He  is  giving 
His  followers  ideals  and  standards.  "You  have 
been  told  not  to  murder;  I  tell  you  not  to  be 
angry  with  anyone,  not  to  be  contemptuous 
of  anyone  as  a  stupid  fellow,  not  to  condemn 
anyone  as  morally  worthless."  It  is  His  way 
of  getting  at  the  underlying  principle  of  the 
old  commandment.  "Thou  shalt  not  kill"  as- 
serts the  sanctity  of  a  human  being  because  he 
is  made  in  the  image  of  God.  Jesus  tells  us 
that  there  are  other  ways  of  violating  that 
sanctity  than  by  putting  him  to  death.  One 
is  losing  your  temper  in  dealing  with  him.  You 
may  not  say  a  word;  you  may  control  both 
tongue  and  facial  expression;  but  in  thought 
you  have  no  use  for  him.  That  for  Jesus  is 
ungodliness,  because  God  has  use  for  this  man ; 
God  cherishes  no  such  irritated  feeling.  An- 
other is  letting  out  some  rather  mild  expression 
derogatory  of  the  other  man's  ability.  Raca 
seems  to  mean  little  worse  than  "You  stupid"; 
it  does  not  imply  contempt  for  a  man's  charac- 


124    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

ter,  only  for  his  head  or  his  skill.  That,  too, 
for  Jesus  is  ungodlike,  for  God  has  made  no 
human  being  good  for  nothing.  A  third  is 
calling  a  man  a  scoundrel,  a  moral  reprobate. 
Such  is  the  Hebrew  significance  of  "fool." 
That  is  ungodlike,  for  none  is  morally  worth- 
less ;  there  are  possibilities  of  good  in  the  lowest. 
Jesus  is  concerned  with  our  feelings  towards 
men,  for  "from  within  out  of  the  heart  of  man 
proceed  murders." 

Let  us  remind  ourselves  what  Jesus  has  suc- 
ceeded in  accomplishing  in  rendering  human 
beings  sacred  to  each  other.  There  is  no  more 
striking  chapter  in  the  record  of  the  moral 
progress  of  mankind  than  that  which  treats  of 
the  new  ideas  of  the  sanctity  of  human  life  that 
entered  the  world  with  the  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity. In  the  Roman  world,  as  in  the  non- 
Christian  world  to-day,  an  unborn  child  was 
not  protected  against  death  by  abortion;  but 
the  new  feeling  that  here  was  an  immortal  child 
of  the  Father  in  heaven  enacted  legislation 
which  is  operative  to  this  day.  Nor  was  there 
any  sentiment  against  disposing  of  a  new-born 
baby,  when  its  parents  did  not  wish  to  rear  it. 
Until  very  recently  a  cart  went  about  the 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT    125 

streets  of  Pekin  gathering  up  the  bodies  of 
dead  infants  whose  families  chose  to  throw 
them  out  rather  than  keep  them  alive.  Rome, 
for  military  reasons,  sought  to  insist  that  all 
healthy  male  babies  should  be  kept;  but  the 
deformed  or  weakly  and  all  female  babies 
might  be  exposed  with  impunity.  The  new' 
Christian  conscience  battled  for  centuries  for 
the  lives  of  little  children ;  it  battles  still  in  the 
campaign  to  safeguard  their  health,  to  protect  j 
them  from  infection,  to  guarantee  the  city's 
milk  supply,  to  assure  even  the  foundling  a. 
home  and  an  upbringing.  And,  perhaps  more 
shocking  to  our  minds,  was  the  passion  for  the 
gladiatorial  shows,  where  men  from  all  parts 
of  the  world  fought  each  other  to  death  or  com- 
bated with  wild  beasts  for  the  amusement  of 
the  populace.  *'The  extinction  of  the  gladia- 
torial spectacles,"  writes  Mr.  Lecky,  "is,  of 
all  the  results  of  early  Christian  influence,  that 
upon  which  the  historian  can  look  with  the 
deepest  and  most  unmingled  satisfaction. 
Horrible  as  was  the  bloodshed  they  directly 
caused,  these  games  were  perhaps  still  more 
pernicious  on  account  of  the  callousness  of 
feeling  they  diffused  through  all  classes,  the 


126    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

fatal  obstacle  they  presented  to  any  general 
elevation  of  humanity.  Yet  the  attitude  of  the 
pagans  decisively  proves  that  no  progress  of 
philosophy  or  social  civilisation  was  Ukely,  for 
a  very  long  period,  to  have  extirpated  them, 
and  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that,  had  they 
been  flourishing  unchallenged  as  in  the  days  of 
Trajan,  when  the  rude  warriors  of  the  North 
obtained  the  empire  of  Italy,  they  would  have 
been  eagerly  adopted  by  the  conquerors, 
would  have  taken  deep  root  in  mediaeval  life, 
and  have  indefinitely  retarded  the  progress  of 
humanity.  Christianity  alone  was  powerful 
enough  to  tear  this  evil  plant  from  the  Roman 
soil."  We  have  still  a  task  of  the  same  charac- 
ter to  perform  in  doing  away  with  every  exhi 
bition  of  brutality  for  the  sake  of  amusement 
The  present  war  has  vastly  increased  the  in- 
terest in  military  and  naval  operations;  more 
children  than  ever  are  playing  soldiers  and 
sailors.  Most  of  such  play  is  harmless  enough 
and  a  necessary  form  of  letting  children  live 
through  a  section,  a  pitifully  long  section,  of 
the  race's  experience ;  and  most  pictures  of  bat- 
tles will  help  to  increase  the  loathing  we  have 
for  the  whole  butcherlike  business  of  blood- 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT   127 

shed;  but  our  consciences  need  to  be  on  the 
alert  against  anything  whatsoever  that  tends 
to  brutahse  and  render  callous  the  hearts  of 
men.  Reverence  for  human  beings  as  children 
of  God,  to  be  loved,  honoured,  served — that  is 
the  attitude  followers  of  Jesus  are  set  to  make 
universal. 

And  as  for  Christ's  own  apparently  impos- 
sible ideal  which  excludes  an  irritated  thought 
or  expression ;  it  did  not  in  His  own  case  hinder 
Him  from  feeling  strongly  and  expressing 
Himself  with  ample  vigour  with  regard  to 
those  who  stood  in  the  way  of  the  Kingdom 
of  love.  He  called  Herod  a  fox  and  the  Phari- 
sees hypocrites ;  He  drove  the  money-changers 
from  the  Temple  with  a  scourge.  But  all  the 
while  one  feels  that  He  respected  the  manhood 
of  those  He  was  forced  to  attack.  His  very 
invective  is  witness  of  the  higher  and  better  ex- 
pectations He  cherished  of  them.  Honour 
men  sufficiently  as  children  of  God,  and  we  can 
speak  frankly  of  that  about  them  in  which  they 
dishonour  themselves.  Our  peril  lies  in  losing 
the  love  that  beheveth  and  hopeth  all  things, 
in  feeling  that  some  are  not  worth  helping.  It 
is  this  giving  up  of  any  man  as  too  trying,  or 


128    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

too  dull,  or  too  bad,  tHat  Jesus  condemns  as 
the  violation  of  the  old  statute  against  mur- 
der:   "Thou  shalt  not  kill." 

There  is  still  another  application  of  this 
commandment :  "Thou  shalt  not  kill  thyself." 
Many  college  debating  societies  have  threshed 
out  the  question,  "Is  suicide  ever  justifiable?" 
We  need  not  discuss  the  hypothetical  question. 
To  Christians  a  man's  life  is  not  his  own;Jt 
belongs  to  God  and  to  those  to  whom  God  has 
given  him.  No  man  has  the  right  to  end  it  for 
himself.  But  there  are  many  more  ways  of 
committing  suicide  than  by  cutting  one's  throat 
or  turning  on  the  gas  jet.  We  talk  sometimes 
of  "killing  time";  but  during  any  section  of 
time  there  is  an  epoch  of  life,  and  to  kill  time  is 
to  slay  some  part  of  self  and  what  self  should 
have  done.  Or  we  speak  of  someone  as  ^'throw- 
ing himself  away";  that  which  he  does  is  not 
worthy  of  him,  and  under  such  circumstances 
part  of  a  man,  and  the  best  part  of  him,  is  not 
really  alive;  he  is  a  partial  suicide.  Or  we  say 
of  ourselves,  excusing  our  dulness  or  want 
of  poise  and  patience :  "I'm  not  myself  to-day." 
What  have  we  done  with  our  self?  There  are 
times    when    physical    weakness    or    nervous 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT    129 

strain  will  make  it  impossible  for  us  to  bring 
our  whole  mind  and  heart  and  will  into  action ; 
but  there  are  often  times  when  the  lower  ideals 
about  us  intrude  and  take  possession  and  we 
are  not  ourselves.  Such  intrusions  are  tem- 
porary suicides ;  and  the  peril  is  that  they  may 
become  permanent. 

The  most  tragic  figure  in  Christian  history  is 
just  such  a  suicide.  Judas  Iscariot  was  once 
man  enough  to  appreciate  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 
He  gave  Him  his  sincere  loyalty  and  obedience. 
He  went  the  length  of  attaching  himself  to  that 
company  of  devoted  men  that  moved  wherever 
the  Master  went.  We  have  no  reason  to  think 
that  Jesus  did  not  welcome  and  trust  him,  ex- 
actly as  He  did  the  rest.  And  Judas  heard  the 
parables  which  Matthew  heard,  and  watched 
the  acts  of  self-giving  kindness  which  Peter 
saw,  and  shared  the  intimate  friendship  of  the 
Master  which  John  knew.  But  there  came 
these  intrusions  of  other  ideals,  and  Judas  did 
not  close  the  door  to  them.  Probably  his  dis- 
loyalties were  very  trifling  to  begin  with — a  lit- 
tle something  false  here  and  a  small  disobedi- 
ence there ;  and  gradually  Jesus  saw  that  Judas 
was  no  longer  himself.    And  the  killing  process 


130    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

went  on  until  at  last  we  see  a  desperate  man 
knotting  a  cord  about  his  own  neck  and  making 
his  own  ghastly  end.  A  man's  hfe  consisteth 
not  in  the  things  that  he  possesses,  but  in  that 
which  possesses  him.  To  have  seen  one's  high- 
est and  not  to  let  it  keep  complete  mastery  of 
us,  is  the  road  to  suicide.  Xp  bave  felt  the  spell 
of  Jesus  Christ,  to  appreciate  Him  and  yield 
Him  one's  loyalty,  but  not  to  let  Him  keep  that 
allegiance  completely,  leads  to  self-destruction. 
^^'Thou  Shalt  not  kill." 


THE  SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT 


THE  SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT 

Exodus  xx:14:    "Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery." 

The  commandment  which  safeguards  hu- 
man life  is  followed  by  this  commandment 
which  protects  the  family  and  asserts  the  sanc- 
tity of  the  marriage  tie.  The  connection  of  the 
two  commandments  suggests  that  home  is  the 
next  most  sacred  thing  to  life  itself. 

In  dealing  with  the  Scriptural  teaching  upon 
marriage  ^'t  is  important  that  we  make  clear 
to  ourselves  in  what  sense  we  accept  the  Bible 
as  authoritative.  If  we  consider  it,  as  it  is 
widely  considered  among  Protestant  Chris- 
tians, a  divine  book  equally  inspired  in  all  its 
parts,  we  shall  arrive  at  a  very  confused  ideal 
of  wedded  life.  At  times  the  Old  Testament 
holds  up  a  high  standard  of  what  husband  and 
wife  should  mean  to  each  other  and  condemns 
severely  the  vice  of  impurity ;  at  other  times  it 
commends,  as  "after  God's  own  heart,"  men 
whose  lives  seem  to  us  profligate,  and  gives  ex- 
plicit teaching  that  has  been  used  to  justify 

133 


134    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

Mormonism ;  and  even  the  New  Testament  oc- 
casionally presents  a  low  ideal.  If  we  wish  to 
gain  a  clearly  Christian  view  of  marriage,  we 
are  compelled  to  take  the  theory  that  the 
Bible  is  the  record  of  the  gradual  evolution  of 
standards,  and  must  be  read  with  discrimi- 
nating eyes  that  distinguish  loftier  from  lower 
ideals;  nor  dare  we  hesitate  to  affirm  that  the 
Bible  writers  are  by  no  means  unerring  guides, 
but  must  be  corrected  by  the  supreme  Chris- 
tian authority — the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  Chris- 
tian consciences. 

Jesus  Himself,  in  handling  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, said  that  Moses  in  his  law  of  divorce  had 
compromised  the  divine  intention.  And  we, 
using  our  Lord's  liberty,  must  confess  that  St. 
Paul  was  not  consistent  with  his  own  Chris- 
tian principles  in  treating  marriage.  We  may 
excuse  his  personal  depreciation  of  wedded  life 
by  reminding  ourselves  of  the  hardships  of  the 
missionary  career  that  made  it  inexpedient  for 
him,  and  particularly  of  his  firm  belief  that  the 
world  was  shortly  to  end  so  that  home  and 
family  ties  appeared  not  worth  forming;  but 
we  have  to  recognise  that  he  never  seems  to 
have  grasped  the  true  union  of  man  and  wife 


SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT    135 

as  comrades  in  faith  and  purpose.  Instead  of 
abiding  by  his  own  statement  that  men  and 
women  are  equal  in  Christ,  he  is  bound  by  his 
traditional  Pharisaic  theology  that  man  is  su- 
perior to  woman,  because  man  was  made  di- 
rectly in  God's  image,  while  woman  was  only 
copied  from  man.  Instead  of  summing  up  the 
wife's  obligation  to  be,  Hke  the  husband's,  to 
love  (although  Paul  himself  believed  that  love 
was  the  fulfilling  of  the  law) ,  he  insists  that  it 
is  to  obey. 

While  the  Bible,  when  read  with  critical 
discrimination,  contains  valuable  teaching  on 
this  subject,  the  Christian  ideal  is  stated  satis- 
factorily only  in  Jesus  Himself.  He  is  con- 
vinced that  marriage  is  normally  the  divine 
purpose:  "Have  ye  not  read  that  He  who 
made  them  from  the  beginning  made  them 
male  and  female,  and  said,  a  man  shall  cleave 
to  his  wife ;  and  the  two  shall  become  one  flesh." 
He  swept  His  keen  eye  over  the  convictions 
of  the  past  and  the  experiences  of  men  and 
women  around  Him,  and  recognised  marriage 
as  the  necessary  completion  and  enrichment  of 
the  normal  life.  But  He  saw  that  there  were 
exceptions.     Under  a  metaphor  that  sounds 


136    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

coarse  to  our  modern  ears,  and  was  not  meant 
by  Him  to  be  taken  literallyj  He  speaks  of 
some  as  constitutionally  not  adapted  for  mar- 
riage, and  of  others  as  deliberately  remaining 
single  for  the  Kingdom's  sake.  In  the  latter 
class  He  may  have  been  thinking  of  John  the 
Baptist,  or  of  some  of  His  own  disciples ;  or  He 
may  be  giving  us  a  bit  of  autobiography  and 
uncovering  His  own  personal  decision.  And 
it  is  significant  that  this  choice  seemed  to  Him 
a  great  sacrifice.  He  appreciated  so  fully  the 
glory  of  the  companionship  of  true  husband 
and  wife,  that  to  forego  marriage  was  to  Him 
an  heroic  demand  justified  only  by  exceptional 
circumstances:  ''He  that  is  able  to  receive  it, 
let  him  receive  it." 

And  because  He  prized  the  wedded  tie  so 
highly  any  breach  of  it  by  divorce  was  intol- 
erable to  Him.  "What,  therefore,  God  hath 
joined  together,  let  not  man  put  asunder."  The 
exception  which  the  Gospel  of  Matthew  inserts 
in  His  saying  almost  certainly  does  not  come 
from  Him,  but  was  an  interpretation  of  His 
teaching  for  practical  use  in  the  Church  of  the 
second  generation.  Jesus  did  not  lay  down 
a  law  to  be  enacted  by  legislatures,  nor  even 


SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT    137 

by  Church  courts;  He  held  up  the  Christian 
ideal  for  his  followers. 

Unfortunately  His  teaching  is  much  of tener 
appealed  to  in  discussions  on  divorce  than  on 
marriage.  His  own  interest  is  in  the  establish- 
ment of  a  divine  relation  between  husband  and 
wife — "those  whom  God  hath  joined  together." 
Jesus  was  an  enthusiast  for  man;  He  saw 
more  in  human  beings  than  any  one  ever  saw 
before  Him ;  He  believed  us  capable  of  higher 
things  than  anyone  else  dared  to  believe :  "Ye 
shall  be  perfect  as  your  heavenly  Father  is 
perfect."  So  He  believed  that  human  rela- 
tions could  be  made  divinely  ideal.  Marriage 
was  the  union  of  man  and  woman  in  all  their 
godlike  capacities;  they  must  be  joined  to- 
gether in  body,  mind,  conscience  and  faith^or 
they  were  not  united  by  God. 

The  prevalent  agitation  against  the  increas- 
ing evil  of  broken  homes  usually  concerns  itself 
with  the  wrong  end  of  the  problem.  We  need 
not  so  much  a  new  conscience  about  divorce  as 
about  marriage. 

Many  marriages  are  matters  of  calculation ; 
wife  or  husband  is  considered  a  desirable  con- 
venience.   A  man  may  be  anxious  to  have  a 


138    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

home  of  his  own,  or  may  feel  himself  lonely,  or 
may  think  marriage  would  help  him  in  his 
business,  or  may  want  somebody  to  care  for  his 
comforts ;  a  woman  may  want  greater  freedom 
than  is  usually  accorded  an  unmarried  girl,  or  ( 
may  be  eager  to  leave  the  parental  home,  or 
may  wish  to  be  supported,  or  may  feel  a  certain 
reproach  that  foolishly  attaches  to  girls  who  / 
remain  single  beyond  a  certain  age,  or  may  . 
have  a  craving  for  motherhood.  None  of  these  I 
motives  is  bad  in  itself ;  but  none  is  an  adequate 
reason  for  marriage.  In  a  recent  study  of  the 
Bronte  sisters  is  an  interesting  proposal  that 
was  made  to  Charlotte  Bronte.  It  came  from 
her  best  friend's  brother,  a  Church  of  England 
curate,  who  had  made  up  his  mind  that  he  ought 
to  secure  a  wife.  He  first  asked  the  daughter 
of  his  former  vicar,  whom  in  his  diary  he  char- 
acterises as  "a  steady,  intelligent,  sensible  and, 
I  trust,  good  girl  named  Mary."  She  refused 
him,  and  he  enters  in  his  diary  "On  Tuesday 
last  received  a  decisive  reply  from  M.  A.  L.'s 
papa;  a  loss,  but  I  trust  a  providential  one. 
Believe  not  her  will  but  her  father's.  Write 
to  a  Yorkshire  friend,  C.  B."  Shortly  after 
occurs  the  record,  "Received  an  unfavourable 


SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT    139 

reply  from  C.  B.  The  will  of  the  Lord  be 
done."  If  the  man  had  only  been  an}i:hing 
like  as  anxious  and  intelligent  in  trying  to  do 
God's  will  in  seeking  a  wife,  as  in  accepting 
piously  his  well-merited  refusals,  there  might 
have  been  some  chance  of  his  forming  a  Chris- 
tian marriage.  What  true  union  of  heart  with 
heart,  purpose  with  purpose,  could  there  be  in 
such  matter-of-fact  proposing  with  no  more 
apparent  feeling  than  is  usually  displayed  in 
visiting  an  intelligence  office? 

Or  at  the  other  extreme,  marriages  are  made 
by  an  unthinking  sentimental  attraction.  Dr. 
Johnson,  in  his  now  seldom  read  romance, 
Basselas,  writes:  "A  youth  and  a  maiden, 
meeting  by  chance  or  brought  together  by 
artifice,  exchange  glances,  reciprocate  civilities, 
go  home  and  dream  of  each  other.  Having 
little  to  divert  attention  or  diversify  thought, 
they  find  themselves  uneasy  apart,  and  there- 
fore conclude  that  they  shall  be  happy  together. 
They  marry  and  discover  what  nothing  but 
voluntary  blindness  before  had  concealed." 
Judgment,  as  well  as  sentiment,  must  be 
wedded.  Our  much  freer  American  way  of 
letting  young  people  meet  and  see  much  of 


140    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

each  other  is  a  long  step  towards  helping  them 
to  find  out  whether,  besides  sentimental  attrac- 
tion, they  are  intelligently  drawn  together  in 
purpose  and  conscience. 

Worst  of  all,  perhaps,  is  the  marriage  en- 
tered upon  because  man  or  woman  resolves 
to  be  married.  Girls  sometimes  are  in  love 
with  the  idea  of  being  in  love;  men  marry 
because  they  make  up  their  minds  to  marry.  In 
the  biography  of  Tschaikowsky,  the  Russian 
composer,  we  are  told  that  he  had  a  genuine 
love  affair  with  an  opera  singer  who  chose  to 
marry  another  man.  Afterwards  he  wrote  to 
his  brother:  "I  have  decided  to  marry;  this  is 
irrevocable,"  and  again,  "I  have  been  thinking 
of  my  future ;  the  result  is  my  firm  resolution 
to  enter  into  the  state  of  matrimony  with  some- 
one or  other."  The  following  May  he  became 
engaged  to  a  girl  who  had  fallen  in  love  with 
him.  He  told  her  he  could  not  love  her;  but 
would  be  a  devoted  friend;  he  described  his 
character  in  detail — ^his  irritability,  his  change- 
able temperament,  his  antipathy  to  people, 
his  financial  condition;  and  asked  her  to  be- 
come his  wife.  She  accepted,  and  after  a  few 
unhappy  months  they  separated.     The  musi- 


SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT    141 

cian  wrote:  "A  few  days  more  and  I  swear 
I  would  have  gone  insane."  There  was  no 
quarrel;  the  composer  struggled,  as  he  writes, 
to  recognise  all  her  good  qualities,  and  she 
prepared  a  home  for  him  which  he  liked  and 
occupied  for  a  short  time.  The  biographer 
simply  tells  us  that  there  was  "an  abyss  of  mis- 
understandings between  the  two." 

A  Christian  marriage  occurs  only  when  two 
lives  touch  completely.  It  has  in  it  the  vehe-i 
mence  and  fervour  and  tenderness,  which  we 
sum  up  in  the  special  sense  of  our  most  sacred 
word  "love."  The  passion  may  come  grad- 
ually or  suddenly,  but  it  brings  always  an  ex- 
perience so  transforming  that  it  seems  a  second 
birth.  A  new  world  comes  into  being  for 
lovers.  We  may  think  them  blind  to  each 
other's  faults,  but  it  is  only  because  love  has 
opened  their  eyes  to  see  in  each  other  what 
none  else,  save  God  Himself,  can  see.  They 
idealise  each  other;  but  that  idealisation  is 
love's  way  of  reaching  and  bringing  out  the 
real  self  within.  They  honour  each  other  su- 
premely; each  is  incomparable  to  the  other's 
mind.  In  each  other  they  find  themselves,  as 
they  never  found  themselves  before.    A  Chris- 


142    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

tian  can  never  find  himself  in  another  unless 
the  other  possesses  at  least  the  capacity  for  his 
loyalties,  his  ideals,  his  faith.  Lives  that  touch 
at  a  number  of  points,  but  remain  utterly  re- 
mote at  what  is  to  one  the  supreme  point,  are 
not  divinely  joined  together.  Paul  had  insight 
enough  to  urge  that  Christians  marry  "in  the 
Lord" — both  lives  controlled  by  the  Spirit  of 
Jesus.  The  Old  Testament  saying,  our  Lord 
singled  out  as  descriptive  of  man's  attitude  to- 
wards God,  is  none  too  strong  to  describe  the 
attitude  of  Christian  husband  and  wife:  they 
must  love  with  all  their  heart,  soul,  mind  and 
strength.  So,  and  only  so,  does  God,  who  is 
love,  join  them  together. 

To  be  sure  the  peculiar  intensity  of  the  first 
affection  that  unites  them  may  not  remain 
constantly.  The  routine  of  life  which  man  and 
wife  must  share  will  expose  in  each  many  un- 
lovely qualities.  They  may  begin  to  question 
whether,  after  all,  they  may  not  have  made  a 
mistake,  whether  they  really  love  each  other. 
But  love  is  for  Christians  loyalty.  God  loves 
us  not  because  we  are  invariably  attractive  to 
Him — far  from  it;  He  loves  us  because  He 
once  idealised  us,  saw  our  possibilities  as  His 


SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT    143 

children,  and  remains  true  to  that  insight,  de- 
spite all  we  do  to  the  contrary.  It  is  a  tragic 
situation  when  husband  or  wife  must  live  for 
years  holding  fast  to  a  gleam  from  the  past  that 
never  seems  to  shine  again  in  the  companion 
of  to-day;  but  that  is  the  loyalty  required  of 
Christian  love;  it  is  the  loyalty  of  Christ  to 
us,  and  it  is  the  loyalty  of  His  God  and  Father. 
And  a  loyalty  that  will  go  all  lengths  is 
needed  to  take  husband  and  wife  the  much 
shorter  distances  of  mutual  concession  and  for- 
giveness and  patience,  that  must  be  travelled 
even  by  those  whose  hves  seem  supremely 
happy.  None  of  us  is  always  at  his  best ;  most 
of  us  come  anywhere  near  it  only  at  rare  inter- 
vals. Temper  is  but  partially  in  control; 
everyone  is  unreasonable  about  some  things; 
each  has  a  full  stock  of  foibles  and  weaknesses 
that  must  be  borne  with;  there  are  numerous 
chances  for  wills  to  clash,  even  for  consciences 
to  differ.  A  love  that  has  to  be  kept  alive  by 
the  attractiveness,  or  even  by  the  responding 
affection  of  the  other,  will  not  suffice ;  love  must 
have  loyalty  within  itself  that  is  independent 
of  present  stimulus  or  response.  And  there 
inay  come  experiences  when  it  will  be  called 


144    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

on  to  bear,  believe,  hope,  endure  all  things; 
that  is  love's  lot  in  our  world.  And  only  a 
love  that  is  capable  of  an  immeasurable  loyalty 
to  the  ideal  self,  which  it  has  once  seen  and 
known  and  honoured,  is  adequate  for  the 
strain.  To  such  love  the  breaking  of  the  re- 
lation will  be  as  intolerable  as  to  Jesus  Him- 
self. That  is  Christian  marriage.  Of  man  and 
woman  so  united  we  can  say  "What  God  hath 
joined  together." 

The  extent  to  which  it  is  feasible  or  desirable 
to  make  legislation  enforce  on  an  entire  popu- 
lation the  Christian  ideal  is  a  very  complex 
question.  When  so  many  men  and  women 
marry  for  motives  that  make  it  impossible  to 
say  that  they  are  united  by  God,  it  becomes  a 
question  of  expediency  to  determine  under 
what  circumstances  man  may,  and  perhaps 
ought,  to  put  them  asunder.  In  this  country 
we  are  suffering  from  an  overdeveloped  and 
undisciplined  individualism.  People  feel  that 
they  can  marry  as  they  please,  and  ought  not 
to  be  held  together  if  the  bond  seems  irksome. 
Much  nonsense  is  talked  about  the  cruelty  of 
enforced  self-suppression.  No  one  ever  finds 
himself  until  he  loses  himself   for  a  larger 


SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT    145 

whole ;  and  society  must  be  held  up  before  peo- 
ple's consciences  as  of  more  importance  than 
their  personal  happiness  or  comfort  or  con- 
venience. 

Obviously  the  State  must  do  its  best  to  safe- 
guard marriage,  and  insist  that  it  is  a  privilege 
open  only  to  those  who  possess  reasonable 
health  and  intelligence,  and  enter  upon  it  with 
proper  deliberation;  but  legislation  can  pro- 
duce but  clumsy  contrivances  when  the  real 
jStness  is  a  matter  of  heart.  When  barriers  to 
marriage  are  enacted,  corresponding  gates  are 
opened  to  immorality.  Probably  none  of  us 
would  wish  a  more  stringent  divorce  law  than 
that  which  stands  on  the  statutes  of  New  York 
at  present ;  many  think  it  too  stringent.  There 
should  be  uniform  laws  throughout  our  land, 
for  it  is  absurd  to  have  that  which  is  illegal 
in  one  state  made  legal  for  those  who  have 
sufficient  money  to  travel  to  another.  But  we 
dare  not  hope  for  very  much  from  legislation. 
We  must  rely  on  spreading  the  Christian  social 
conscience,  the  conscience  that  in  loyalty  to 
children  will  endure  almost  everything  from 
their  father  or  mother ;  and,  where  the  endur- 
ance point  is  past,  will  certainly  not  ask  for 


146    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

more  than  separation;  the  conscience  that  in 
loyalty  to  that  which  love  has  once  revered  will 
be  willing  to  suffer  and  wait  and  hope  for 
years,  and  to  forgive  with  the  amazing  forgive- 
ness of  that  Old  Testament  prophet  who  took 
back  his  wife,  and  the  mother  of  his  children, 
after  she  had  spent  years  in  a  life  of  shame. 
We  are  far  from  that  social  conscience  yet; 
but  as  Christians  we  must  set  our  eyes  toward 
it  for  ourselves  and  our  land. 

Nor  is  it  easy  to  determine  to  what  extent 
the  Church  should  try  to  put  into  her  rules  the 
ideal  of  Jesus.  The  Gospel  of  Matthew  shov/s 
how  very  early  the  Church  felt  impelled  to 
adapt  the  ideal  to  circumstances.  Our  liord 
has  not  left  us  a  fixed  law,  but  a  living  Spirit. 
When  a  marriage  has  been  irreparably  broken, 
and  we  are  dealing  with  the  person  who  seems 
to  have  been  more  sinned  against  than  sinning, 
and  when  no  injustice  is  being  done  to  children 
and  the  ideal  of  marriage  itself  is  not  being 
flouted  and  degraded,  it  is  a  fair  question 
whether  it  is  the  mind  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ 
not  to  further  and  bless  a  second  attempt  to 
establish  a  true  wedded  life.  Shall  we  say 
that  the  evangelist  who  adapted  the  words  of 


SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT    147 

Jesus  to  the  Church  situation  of  his  day  was 
not  inspired  by  the  Spirit-of  the  Master?  And 
has  not  the  Church  of  to-day  the  same  right  to 
be  freely  led  by  the  same  Spirit?  Our  main 
task  is  to  train  Christians  who  will  not  marry 
save  when  so  divinely  impelled  that  of  them  we 
have  a  right  to  say:  "What  God  hath  joined 
together  let  not  man  put  asunder."  But,  in 
a  world  of  imperfect  knowledge  and  faulty 
consciences,  it  may  be  also  the  Church's  duty 
to  help  the  bitterly  disappointed  and  cruelly 
abused  to  realise  the  divine  ideal  in  a  second 
attempt  at  marriage,  when  the  first  has  proved 
a  hopeless  failure. 

Jesus  gave  this  ancient  commandment  an  in- 
terpretation all  His  own  when  He  told  His 
followers  that  for  us  an  impure  look  or  thought 
was  to  be  shunned  as  adultery.  And  Jesus 
has  succeeded  in  giving  the  world  in  His  faith 
and  ideals  its  strongest  purifying  force.  Ori- 
gen,  centuries  ago,  could  answer  the  objections 
of  the  heathen  Celsus  by  appealing  to  well 
known  facts :  "The  work  of  Jesus,"  he  wrote, 
"reveals  itself  among  all  mankind  where  com- 
munities of  God  founded  by  Jesus  exist, 
which  are  composed  of  men  reclaimed  from  a 


148     THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

thousand  vices;  and  to  this  day  the  name  of 
Jesus  produces  decency  of  manners."  We  have 
constant  need  to  insist  on  that  decency.  Chris- 
tians cannot  be  too  careful  in  refusing  to  pa- 
tronise amusements,  or  to  have  anything  to 
do  with  papers  or  books,  that  are  not  absolutely 
clean.  Information  about  all  sorts  of  disgust- 
ing vices  is  not  conducive  to  pure  thinking. 
There  are  some  things  we  can  well  afford  to 
know  nothing  about.  Of  such  practices,  all  too 
common  in  his  day,  Paul  writes  "let  them  not 
even  be  named  among  you  as  becometh  those 
set  apart." 

A  recent  teacher  has  followed  Christ's 
method  of  applying  an  ugly  word  to  what 
many  of  us  are  tempted  to  think  trivial,  in 
order  to  bring  home  to  our  consciences  its  in- 
trinsic evil.  Dr.  Cabot  of  Boston  has  pointed 
out  that  the  essential  sin  in  prostitution  is 
treating  a  person  impersonally — as  a  mere 
thing.  And  he  wishes  us  to  label  all  im- 
personal treatment  of  people  prostitution. 
How  widespread  that  sin  is  among  the  most 
respectable!  The  relation  of  employers  and 
employed  are  often  impersonal — housekeepers 
think  of  a  maid  merely  as  cook  or  waitress,  not 


SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT     149 

as  a  sister  in  the  family  of  God  with  aspira- 
tions, feelings,  ideals,  convictions;  manu- 
facturers regard  those  who  sit  at  their 
machines  as  so  many  hands,  and  make  no 
effort  to  deal  with  them  as  minds  and  con- 
sciences and  souls ;  employees  regard  their  em- 
ployer or  foreman  merely  as  "the  boss,"  with 
no  consideration  for  the  man;  all  of  us  accept 
a  great  quantity  of  services  from  a  number  of 
people  without  letting  any  outgo  of  ourselves 
reach  them.  This  is  as  essentially  prostitution, 
as  the  impure  thought  is  adultery;  it  is  the 
degradation  of  personality.  We  can  all  feel 
whether  we  are  dealt  with  as  persons  or  as 
things — mere  factors  in  the  convenience  or 
advance  or  life-background  of  another.  And 
what  we  feel,  others  can  feel  in  their  dealings 
with  us.  Purity  between  lives  is  safeguarded 
only  by  reverence  for  the  child  of  God  in  every 
man  and  woman.  The  shame  of  thousands  of 
women  in  our  own  city  is  but  the  outcome  of 
the  impurity  of  heart  that  fails  to  personalise 
every  touch  of  life  with  life.  And  who  of  us 
is  guiltless? 

For  us,  believing  men  and  women,  the  glory 
of   human    wedlock    shines    most    brilliantly 


150    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

when  we  use  it,  as  generations  of  believers 
have  used  it  before  us,  as  a  symbol  of  God's 
relationship  to  man.  "Thy  Maker  is  thy 
Husband."  For  the  divine  union  exalts  and 
sanctifies  the  human  tie.  "Christ  loved  the 
Church  and  gave  Himself  for  it  that  He  might 
present  it  to  Himself  a  glorious  Church,  not 
having  spot  or  wrinkle  or  any  such  thing, 
even  so  ought  husbands  to  love  their  wives," 
writes  a  Christian  apostle.  It  was  God's  mer- 
ciful and  unalterably  loyal  love  for  His  peo- 
ple that  led  Hosea  to  forgive  and  take  back 
Gomer,  his  faithless  wife.  The  divine  Hus- 
band became  an  irresistible  ideal  for  the  human 
husband.  We  take  all  the  wealth  we  have 
discovered  in  our  richest  home  experiences, 
and  let  it  be  to  us  a  suggestion  of  what  we  may 
expect  from  God.  We  think  of  the  devotion, 
the  patience,  the  tenderness,  the  trust,  the  alle- 
giance, given  us  by  our  nearest  and  dearest;  and 
we  look  up  to  the  heavens  in  faith  and  expect 
nothing  less,  when  we  say  to  ourselves,  "God 
is  love."  And  so  far  from  failing  us,  we  dis- 
cover that  our  highest  anticipations,  based  on 
human  affection,  are  too  small.  God  outdoes 
man's  or  woman's  best ;  and  he  sends  husband 


SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT    151 

and  wife  back  from  their  experience  of  Him 
to  fill  the  cup  of  their  mutual  obligations  with 
a  fuller  measure,  because  of  the  overflowing 
heart  they  have  found  in  Him.  We  learn 
love's  meaning  first  in  our  most  tender  human 
relations ;  but  the  highest  definition  these  give 
us  proves  inadequate  when  we  try  to  put  into 
it  all  that  God's  devotion  means  to  us. 
"Hereby  perceive  we  love,  because  He  laid 
down  His  life  for  us."  The  Calvary  of  long 
ago  o'ertops  the  loftiest  summit  of  devotion 
we  know  anywhere  else.  And  from  our  ex- 
perience of  divine  redeeming  love  we  draw  in- 
spirations for  that  tender  loyalty  which  crowns 
the  union  of  man  and  wife. 


THE  EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT 


THE  EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT 

Exodus  xx:  15:    *'Thou  shall  not  steal.** 

The  Decalogue  runs  in  a  suggestive  se- 
quence; one  after  another  follow  command- 
ments safeguarding  life,  family,  property.  It 
surprises  some  to  find  the  sanctity  of  posses- 
sions placed  beside  the  sanctity  of  life  and 
home.  Religion  is  interested  not  in  things  but 
in  persons;  yes,  but  property  is  essential  to 
persons.  No  man  can  realise  his  personality 
without  possessions.  Just  as  marriage  is  held 
sacred  for  the  sake  of  persons  for  whose  per- 
fecting home  is  necessary,  property  is  pro- 
tected because  of  its  value  for  the  characters 
of  men.  Like  life  itself,  property  is  indispens- 
able to  train  human  beings  into  true  children  of 
God. 

Two  fundamental  religious  convictions  un- 
derlie the  Bible's  attitude  towards  possessions. 
The  first  is  that  all  things  belong  to  God,  and 
their  human  owners  hold  them  only  as  His 
representatives   for  the   time   being.     When 

155 


156    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

David  passes  over  to  Solomon  the  materials  he 
has  collected  for  the  building  of  the  Temple, 
he  is  represented  as  saying:  "Thine,  O  Lord, 
is  the  greatness,  for  all  that  is  in  the  heaven 
and  in  the  earth  is  Thine.  Both  riches  and 
honour  come  of  Thee,  and  Thou  rulest  over 
all ;  and  in  Thine  hand  it  is  to  make  great  and 
to  give  strength  unto  all.  All  this  store  that 
we  have  prepared  to  build  Thee  an  house  for 
Thine  holy  name  cometh  of  Thine  hand,  and  is 
Thine  own.  O  Lord,  keep  this  forever  in  the 
imagination  of  the  thoughts  of  the  heart  of 
Thy  people,  and  establish  their  heart  unto 
Thee."  This  prayer  connects  God's  owner- 
ship with  the  fleeting  character  of  human  life: 
"For  we  are  strangers  before  Thee,  and  so- 
journers, as  all  our  fathers  were,"  so  that  man's 
proprietorship  of  anything  must  be  temporary. 
"We  brought  nothing  into  this  world,  neither 
can  we  carry  anything  out."  God's  it  was,  and 
His  it  remains.  As  Job  said  when  possessions 
and  family  were  gone:  "The  Lord  gave  and 
the  Lord  hath  taken  away." 

The  second  is  that  God  gives  the  earth  to 
mankind  as  a  family,  and  it  is  therefore  family 
property:     "The  earth  hath  He  given  to  the. 


EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT    157 

children  of  men."  The  Old  Testament  horizon 
is  limited  usually  to  Israel ;  all  possessions  be- 
long to  the  nation,  and  each  Israehte  is  en- 
titled to  his  share  in  the  national  heritage.  In 
theory  a  man's  land  could  not  be  taken  in  per- 
petuity from  him  and  his,  but  must  be  returned 
in  the  Year  of  Jubilee.  In  order  to  remind 
owners  that  their  fields  were  not  primarily 
theirs  but  the  nation's,  they  were  bidden  not  to 
reap  their  harvests  thoroughly,  but  to  leave 
the  gleanings  for  the  poor.  When  economic 
pressure  created  a  landless  and  dependent 
class,  the  prophets  protested  that  the  religious 
ideal  of  brotherhood  was  infringed  upon :  "Je- 
hovah will  enter  into  judgment  with  the  elders 
and  princes  of  His  people.  It  is  ye  that  have 
eaten  up  the  vineyard ;  the  spoil  of  the  poor  is 
in  your  houses.  What  mean  ye  that  ye  crush 
my  people,  and  grind  the  face  of  the  poor?" 
and  again,  "Woe  unto  those  who  join  house  to 
house,  who  add  field  to  field,  till  there  is  no 
more  room,  and  ye  are  settled  alone  in  the 
midst  of  the  land."  Their  indignation  is  not 
so  much  that  a  few  have  amassed  great  wealth, 
although  there  are  protests  against  wasteful 
luxury  and  display,  but  that  many  of  the  peo- 


158    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

pie  are  without  property,  and  the  possession- 
less  cannot  develop  morally  as  they  would  had 
they  their  share  in  the  national  domain.  After 
the  Exile  Nehemiah  insists  that  the  well-to-do 
shall  restore  to  every  Israelite  his  small  an- 
cestral holding,  so  that  none  shall  be  without 
the  means  to  have  a  home  and  a  livelihood. 

The  New  Testament  discloses  these  two  con- 
victions firmly  imbedded  in  Christian  minds, 
but  God's  fatherhood  of  all  men  takes  away 
the  barriers  that  usually  confined  Old  Testa- 
ment thought  to  Israel.  Earth  and  its  contents 
is  the  Father's  house  with  bread  enough  and 
to  spare  for  His  children.  God  gives  men  all 
things  richly  to  enjoy,  so  that  they  are  meant 
to  possess  and  take  pleasure  in  things.  Jesus' 
personal  poverty  has  been  over-emphasised; 
for  the  greater  part  of  His  adult  life  He 
worked  as  a  carpenter,  and  enjoyed  a  comfort- 
able home  in  Nazareth ;  and  although  later  His 
special  task  prevented  Him  from  following  a 
remunerative  calling.  He  gladly  accepted  the 
hospitality  of  the  relatively  wealthy,  lived  in 
some  disciple's  house  in  Capernaum,  and  re- 
ceived the  gifts  of  generous  and  grateful  ad- 
herents.    He  heartily  delighted  in  life's  good 


EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT     159 

things,  so  that  critics  found  a  basis  for  calling 
Him  glutton  and  winebibber. 

In  His  teaching,  too,  men  are  to  recognise 
that  the  title  to  things  is  vested  primarily  in 
the  brotherhood,  whose  collective  prayer  is, 
"Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread."  No  Chris- 
tian is  expected  to  ask  for  himself  what  he 
does  not  as  eagerly  seek  for  everybody  else. 
So  strong  was  this  sense  of  brotherhood  in  the 
early  days  of  Christian  enthusiasm  that  men 
freely  placed  their  possessions  at  the  disposal 
of  the  Christian  community.  No  one  was  com- 
pelled to  give  up  his  property,  and  his  right  to 
keep  it  was  recognised;  "While  it  remained," 
Peter  says  to  Ananias  about  his  possession, 
"did  it  not  remain  thine  own  and  after  it  was 
sold,  was  it  not  in  thy  power?"  There  was  no 
deliberately  planned  communism;  but,  moved 
by  the  spirit  of  brotherhood,  "none  said  that 
aught  of  the  things  which  he  possessed  was 
his  own";  and,  in  that  sense,  "they  had  all 
things  common." 

Jesus  laid  stress  on  two  principles  connected 
with  the  tenure  of  property.  One  was  that 
His  followers'  hearts  must  be  detached  from 
things:     "A  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the 


160    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

abundance  of  things  which  he  possesseth."  It 
was  that  detachment  rather  than  a  love  of  pov- 
erty that  made  Him  urge  the  young  ruler  to 
sell  all  that  he  had.  Riches  are  in  His  mind 
perils ;  they  are  apt  to  render  their  possessors 
self-sufficient,  self-important,  self-indulgent — 
the  opposite  of  the  spirit  which  rules  in  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven.  A  man  with  large  wealth 
almost  invariably  trusts  in  it  to  help  him 
through  crises,  instead  of  putting  his  confi- 
dence in  something  higher.  He  is  likely  to  be- 
come domineering,  because  many  persons  defer 
to  him,  and  to  feel  that  his  wealth  entitles  his 
opinion  to  consideration.  He  is  under  great 
pressure  to  indulge  himself,  to  think  much  of 
his  own  comfort,  pleasure,  convenience,  and 
to  be  unbraced  for  daily  personal  sacrifice  and 
hard  labour.  Jesus  emphasises  the  danger  in 
the  striking  metaphor;  "It  is  easier  for  a 
camel  to  go  through  a  needle's  eye  than  for  a 
rich  man  to  enter  the  kingdom  of  God."  Of 
which  passage  Coleridge  once  wrote:  "Often 
as  the  motley  reflexes  of  my  experience  move 
in  long  processions  of  manifold  groups  before 
me,  the  distinguished  and  world-honoured  com- 
pany of  Christian  Mammonials  appear  to  the 


EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT    161 

eye  of  my  imagination  as  a  drove  of  camels 
heavily  laden,  yet  all  at  full  speed,  and  each  in 
the  confident  expectation  of  passing  through 
the  eye  of  the  needle,  without  stop  or  halt,  both 
beast  and  baggage." 

The  other  principle  is  that  of  stewardship  of 
everything  that  a  man  possesses.  Whatever 
a  Christian  owns  must  be  used  for  the  service 
of  human  need,  through  which  alone  he  serves 
his  Lord:  ^'Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  unto  one  of 
these  My  brethren,  ye  did  it  unto  Me."  Ob- 
viously Jesus  presupposes  that  a  Christian  has 
some  private  property;  if  there  were  nothing 
which  he  called  his  own,  what  could  he  use  in 
the  service  of  the  brotherhood  as  their  trustee 
under  God  ?  Jesus,  no  less  than  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, considered  property  necessary  to  the  at- 
tainment of  personality  as  a  child  of  God. 
When  St.  Paul  is  handling  a  thief,  he  tells  him 
first  to  labour  that  he  may  have;  the  possession 
of  property  is  essential  to  training  his  con- 
science in  responsibility.  And  second,  he  is  to 
labour  to  have  that  he  may  give  to  him  that  is 
in  need.  The  thief's  Christian  training  is  not 
complete  until  he  is  serving  the  brotherhood. 
And  such  service  is  not  charity  in  the  sense  of 


162    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

gratuitous  generosity  on  the  part  of  the  giver ; 
it  is  justice,  for  possessors  owe  their  brethren 
whatever  they  need,  so  far  as  it  lies  in  their 
power  to  meet  that  need.  "Whoso  hath  the 
world's  goods,  and  beholdeth  his  brother  in 
need,  and  shutteth  up  his  compassion  from  him, 
how  doth  the  love  of  God  abide  in  him?" 

To  sum  up,  from  the  Christian  point  of  view 
all  property  belongs  primarily  to  God,  and  sec- 
ondarily to  society  as  the  family  of  God,  whose 
duty  it  is  to  see  that  each  child  of  the  Father 
has  a  share  of  his  own  in  the  family  heritage, 
which  he  is  to  use  as  his  Father's  steward  for 
the  needs  of  the  family,  recognising  their  claim 
upon  him  and  his. 

In  that  summary,  there  are  three  sets  of  du- 
ties— God's,  society's,  the  individual's.  Let  us 
examine  them  in  order. 

1.  God  as  Father  is  under  obligation  to 
provide  for  His  children,  and  to  see  to  it  that 
there  is  enough  in  His  world  for  everybody. 
As  Christians  we  beheve  that  God  can  be  re- 
lied on  to  do  His  duty.  When  we  pray,  "Give 
us  this  day  our  daily  bread,"  we  are  confident 
that  He  answers  with  a  supply  sufficient  for 
His  whole  household.    If  it  be  in  His  power 


EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT    163 

and  He  fails  to  provide  for  us,  we  can  say  to 
Him:  "Thou  shalt  not  steal."  He  lays  no 
duties  on  our  consciences  which  He  does  not 
lay  upon  His  own,  for  He  asks  us  to  be  per- 
fect as  He  is  perfect.  If,  then,  there  is  want, 
we  must  put  it  down  to  our  bad  management, 
not  to  a  genuine  lack.  We  are  not  encouraged 
to  pray:  "Give  us  this  day  our  daily  cake"; 
it  is  not  a  wise  father's  part  to  pamper  his 
children;  but  we  are  encouraged  to  ask  with  as- 
surance for  bread  for  all,  our  bread.  Many 
economists  go  on  the  assumption  that  large 
masses  of  men  must  live  on  the  verge  of  starva- 
tion always ;  and  most  of  us  are  brought  up  to 
believe  that  want  is  the  inevitable  lot  of 
millions.  Wealth  and  poverty  are,  to  be  sure, 
relative  terms,  and  there  will  always  be  richer 
and  poorer  people ;  but  no  Christian  can  assent 
to  the  notion  that  earth  is  so  constituted  that 
many  must  necessarily  be  nearly  starving. 
That  would  argue  a  niggardly  God,  and  we 
believe  in  One  who  openeth  His  hand  and  sat- 
isfieth  the  desire  of  every  living  thing.  In  a 
world  where  sickness,  accident  and  death  are 
present  we  shall  always  have  the  poor  with  us, 
as  Jesus  said ;  but  poverty,  in  the  sense  of  ac- 


164    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

tual  want  among  the  well  and  capable,  must 
always  appear  to  the  Christian  as  a  human 
blunder  and  sin,  man's  defeat  of  God's  inten- 
tion. 

2.  It  is  society's  duty  to  see  that  each  indi- 
vidual born  into  the  world  has  a  portion  of  the 
family  heritage  that  he  can  call  his  own.  This 
in  the  eyes  of  the  Bible  writers  is  a  religious 
necessity.  A  man  without  private  property 
cannot  serve  God  through  his  fellow  men,  for 
he  lacks  the  means  adequately  to  express  him- 
self. A  certain  amount  of  things  is  needed  for 
self-attainment.  The  great  movement  which 
begins  Israel's  history  was  a  labour  movement 
on  the  part  of  people  who  felt  that  as  slaves 
without  possessions  they  could  not  exercise 
their  religion.  "The  Lord  spake  unto  Moses, 
Go  in  unto  Pharaoh,  and  say  unto  him.  Thus 
saith  the  Lord,  Let  My  people  go,  that  they 
may  serve  Me''  The  divine  plan  for  humanity 
is  the  education  of  men  into  independent  and 
reliant  sons  of  God;  that  cannot  be  so  long 
as  they  are  economically  dependent.  If  a  man 
is  a  slave,  whose  work  or  idleness  is  not  in  his 
own  power,  who  has  no  chance  to  use  his  con- 
science in  his  labour,  and  cannot  express  his 


EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT    165 

personality  in  initiative,  in  perseverance,  in 
thrift,  in  loving  service,  he  is  hindered  from  at- 
taining Christian  manhood.  And  Israel,  born 
into  national  life  in  this  struggle  for  industrial 
freedom,  took  care  to  safeguard  in  its  laws 
each  man's  right  to  work,  and  to  protect  him  in 
the  possession  of  his  tools :  "No  man  shall  take 
the  mill  or  the  upper  mill-stone  to  pledge;  for 
he  taketh  a  man's  life  to  pledge."  That  with 
which  a  man  earns  his  living  must  be  as  sa- 
credly kept  his,  as  the  community  protects  his 
life.  Unless  a  man  is  assured  his  chance  to 
work  and  the  means  with  which  to  work,  there 
is  no  guarantee  that  he  can  keep  any  private 
property,  and  private  property  is  essential  to 
his  life  in  fellowship  with  God. 

Under  modern  conditions  it  is  by  no  means 
easy  to  devise  a  system  by  which  society  can 
secure  each  man  his  chance  to  work  and  guar- 
antee his  owning  something.  When  a  man 
earns  his  living  by  operating  a  machine,  or 
working  in  a  mine,  or  selling  goods  over  a 
counter,  or  keeping  books  in  an  office,  which 
belongs  to  others,  it  is  not  so  simple  to  safe- 
guard his  chance  to  labour,  as  when  he  merely 
had  to  be  protected  from  the  loss  of  a  couple  of 


166    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

millstones.  The  Bible  sets  forth  no  economic 
programme,  and  all  attempts  to  read  into  it 
socialism  or  communism,  or  any  other  indus- 
trial theory  are  mistaken ;  but  it  lays  down  re- 
ligious principles  which  each  age  must  use  its 
conscience  and  intelligence  to  embody  in  the 
social  organisation  of  its  day.  And  it  is  our 
duty  as  Christians  to  appreciate  that  private 
property  is  indispensable  to  religion,  that  no 
man  can  be  a  steward  save  as  he  can  call  some- 
thing his  own,  and  that  this  private  tenure  of 
possessions  is  not  secure  save  as  men  and 
women  are  guaranteed  the  means  and  oppor- 
tunity to  labour.  The  Christian  criticism  of 
things  as  they  are  is  not  that  a  few  have  vast 
possessions,  but  that  far  too  many  have  none. 
Men  and  women  of  large  means  can  be  trained 
to  be  good  stewards,  although  a  large  fortune 
constitutes  a  very  serious  problem  for  its  pos- 
sessor, and  we  ought  to  recognise  that,  as  a 
Christian,  he  faces  one  of  the  hardest  tasks 
allotted  to  any  man.  But  persons  with  noth- 
ing cannot  be  trained  in  responsibility.  It  is 
difficult  to  give  them  a  share  in  the  civic  con- 
science. Possessing  no  stake  in  the  country, 
they  do  not  feel  an  obligation  for  its  welfare, 


EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT    167 

and  having  nothing  to  lose,  they  welcome  any 
change  and  are  always  open-eared  for  radical 
agitation.  Furthermore,  Christianity  has  little 
meaning  for  them,  and  its  adherents  appear 
to  them  hypocrites.  It  inculcates  brotherhood ; 
but  where  for  them  is  there  brotherliness  in  a 
community,  rich  in  possessions  and  opportuni- 
ties, that  offers  them  no  sure  chance  to  earn 
a  living  and  maintain  for  themselves  and  theirs 
a  home  ?  It  proclaims  that  God  is  Father,  and 
His  fatherliness  is  to  be  known  in  His  care 
for  His  children ;  but  where  can  they  feel  God's 
personal  interest  in  them  when  they  have  no 
lot  in  the  family  inheritance? 

Christ  nowhere  teaches  that  all  men  are  to 
have  equal  shares  of  anything;  His  parable  of 
the  talents  presupposes  an  uneven  distribution 
of  possessions;  but  under  existing  conditions 
far  too  many  have  no  part  at  all  in  the  house- 
hold's goods.  A  child  born  into  a  Christian 
world  must  be  assured  the  chance  to  labour  that 
he  may  liave^  that  he  may  give.  Until  society 
secures  the  right  to  private  property  for  every 
sane  and  healthy  man  and  woman,  we  are  steal- 
ing from  them,  depriving  them  of  their  due 
share  in  God's  endowment  of  the  family  of 


168    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

man.  And  society  needs  to  be  told,  "Thou 
shalt  not  steal." 

Further,  it  is  society's  duty  to  insist  that  no 
possessor  shall  employ  his  means  in  a  way  that 
is  harmful  to  the  general  good.  It  must  im- 
press on  every  private  owner  that  his  property 
is  primarily  the  family's ;  and  that  it  is  his  only 
in  so  far  as  his  control  of  it  is  for  the  family's 
interest.  We  allow  a  man  to  build  his  own 
house,  and  accord  him  fullest  liberty  in  de- 
signing and  arranging  it  that  he  may  express 
his  individuahty ;  but  we  insist  that  its  plans 
shall  not  violate  the  fire  laws  or  menace  the 
public  health.  We  face  in  the  social  control 
of  private  property  the  delicate  problem  of 
affording  the  individual  sufficient  liberty  to  ex- 
press his  unique  self  (and  that  must  imply 
freedom  to  do  a  good  many  things  that  seem 
to  conventional  minds  foolish  or  even  wicked), 
while  we  safeguard  the  interests  of  society  as 
a  whole. 

There  are  wide  differences  of  opinion  be- 
tween those  who  lay  the  stress  on  social  rights 
and  those  who  emphasise  individual  freedom. 
As  Christians  we  have  no  ready-made  solution 
to  offer;  the  proper  harmony  of  both  prin- 


EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT   169 

ciples  will  doubtless  take  us  a  long  while  to 
establish,  exactly  as  in  political  organisation 
we  are  slowly  harmonising  vigorous  personal 
initiative  on  the  part  of  leaders  and  private 
citizens  with  adequate  democratic  control.  But 
as  Christians  we  must  hold  up  the  two  prin- 
ciples: society's  duty  to  accord  every  man 
private  property  for  self-expression  as  a  child 
of  God,  and  society's  duty  to  insist  that  each 
child  recognise  the  prior  claims  of  the  whole 
family  and  use  his  property  for  the  well-being 
of  his  brethren. 

3.  The  individual's  duty  is  first  of  all  to  re- 
member that  whatever  he  owns  is  given  him  by 
God  through  society.  We  could  own  nothing, 
except  by  our  sheer  physical  force  to  take  and 
keep  it,  were  it  not  for  the  community's  pro- 
tection of  our  rights  through  its  laws.  And  if 
we  are  allowed  the  use  and  enjoyment  of  pos- 
sessions, it  is  because  we  are  presumed  to  em- 
ploy them  for  the  good  of  the  brotherhood.  A 
man's  income,  and  all  that  it  enables  him  to 
purchase,  is  in  a  very  real  sense  a  salary  paid 
him  by  society  for  the  services  that  he  is  sup- 
posed to  render.  It  makes  no  difference  how 
that  income  comes  to  him,  whether  through  in- 


170    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

herited  wealth,  or  the  labour  of  others,  or 
through  his  own  efforts;  it  is  a  portion  of  the 
family's  riches  placed  at  his  disposal,  and  so- 
ciety is  justified  in  making  that  outlay  on  him 
only  in  so  far  as  he  makes  a  commensurate  re- 
turn in  usefulness  to  his  brethren. 

It  is  a  searching  and  sobering  question  for 
our  consciences  whether  you  and  I  are  worth 
our  keep  to  the  family  of  God.  We  must  to- 
tal up  what  it  costs  to  feed,  clothe,  educate, 
house,  amuse,  inspire  us;  and  ask  ourselves 
whether  we  perform  an  adequate  service  in 
view  of  the  salary  society  allows  us.  There 
are  many  of  us  who  are  freed  from  laborious 
drudgery  because  others  attend  to  this  for  us. 
We  are  released  from  the  hardest  physical 
strain  and  the  dirtiest  and  most  disagreeable 
labour,  while  others  remain  hewers  of  wood  and 
drawers  of  water — fishermen  braving  the  perils 
and  exposures  of  winter  off  the  banks  of  New- 
foundland, lonely  lightship-keepers  tossing 
day  and  night  on  the  waves,  drivers  of  the  gar- 
bage wagons  in  our  city  streets,  "sandhogs" 
subjected  to  the  diseases  and  confined  to  the 
unpleasant  surroundings  of  toil  underground 
and  under  our  rivers.     Is  our  release  from 


EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT    171 

such  tasks  justified  by  the  beneficent  achieve- 
ments of  our  liberated  time  and  energy?  If 
one  rides  in  an  automobile,  while  the  majority 
of  his  fellow-citizens  are  compelled  to  use  less 
swift  and  comfortable  means  of  transit,  his 
contribution  to  the  public  good  must  be  cor- 
respondingly greater,  or  society  is  not  war- 
ranted in  the  larger  expenditure  it  is  accord- 
ing him.  For  everything  that  we  use  or  en- 
joy— the  clothes  on  our  backs,  the  comforts 
of  our  dwellings,  the  leisure  at  our  disposal, 
the  amusements  that  entertain  us,  the  intel- 
lectual stimulus  and  training  given  us,  the  re- 
ligious inspirations  we  receive — we  must  make 
a  corresponding  payment  in  service  to  the  fam- 
ily of  God's  children.  "Thou  shalt  not  steal." 
In  thinking  of  our  income,  we  are  entitled  to 
distinguish  between  what  we  spend  upon  our- 
selves and  what  we  devote  to  the  service  of 
others.  We  can  leave  the  latter  aside  for  the 
moment;  it  is  what  we  use  for  ourselves  and 
our  families,  for  food,  rent,  pleasures,  educa- 
tion, inspiration,  that  is  society's  salary  to  us 
for  personal  services  rendered.  If  we  are  not 
worth  that  before  the  bar  of  our  consciences, 
there  is  nothing  for  us  but  to  curtail  our  ex- 


172    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

penses.  To  spend  more  than  one  really  earns 
is  just  thieving,  and  it  must  be  labelled  by  its 
proper  name.  No  law  may  lay  its  hand  upon 
us,  and  hale  us  to  a  court,  and  place  us  behind 
prison  bars  with  striped  clothing;  but  the 
stripes  are  there  in  the  eyes  of  a  just  God,  and 
will  more  and  more  appear  to  the  eyes  of  the 
enlightened  consciences  of  men. 

What  we  set  aside  for  gifts  to  public  causes 
is  society's  trust  to  our  wisdom  and  conscience 
to  expend  in  its  name,  and  in  God's  name,  from 
whom  society's  wealth  comes.  It  behooves  us 
to  look  carefully  at  the  sources  of  this  wealth. 
No  Christian  wishes  to  be  generous  with  money 
that  has  been  gained  by  underpaying  the  la- 
bour of  those  who  produced  it,  or  by  selling 
goods  of  a  character  or  at  a  price  that  made 
their  sale  no  genuine  public  service.  Under 
present  circumstances  conscience  has  to  func- 
tion at  long  range,  and  go  far  afield  to  post  it- 
self upon  the  conditions  under  which  wealth  is 
produced.  It  does  not  matter  whether  we  meas- 
ure our  income  in  millions  or  in  a  very  few  dol- 
lars, we  cannot  escape  the  obligation  of  inquir- 
ing how  it  is  created.  Thou  shalt  not  steal, 
even  when  the  theft  is  unintentional;  and  no 


EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT    173 

sanctification  of  money  by  its  dedication  to  the 
holiest  uses  can  remove  the  social  wrong  of  its 
unjust  acquisition. 

In  the  gifts  which  a  Christian  makes  out  of 
that  which  is  his  own  by  God's  gift  through 
society,  he  has  the  final  perfecting  of  his  char- 
acter through  his  possessions.  That  is  a  strik- 
ing saying  of  our  Lord's,  "Make  to  yourselves 
friends  by  means  of  the  mammon  of  unright- 
eousness ;  that,  when  it  shall  fail,  they  may  re- 
ceive you  into  the  eternal  tabernacles."  In  a 
world  as  yet  so  imperfect  as  ours  no  money  is 
gained  in  entire  brotherliness ;  the  best  business 
is  doubtless  harsh  and  unkind  to  someone,  so 
that  its  earnings  may  be  called  "mammon  of 
unrighteousness."  Christ  bids  us  take  it  and 
employ  it  to  make  friends,  to  establish  relations 
of  helpfulness  between  ourselves  and  those 
who  need  what  we  have;  and  adds  that  these 
relations  will  persist  in  the  final  and  lasting 
order  of  things.  We  began  by  insisting  that 
property  was  essential  for  developing  person- 
ality;  here  Christ  is  pleading  that  we  shall  turn 
property  into  personal  relations,  for  people 
last,  while  things  perish.  We  grow  our  char- 
acters not  in  contact  with  things  but  with  other 


174    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

men;  property  becomes  a  means  of  enlarging 
ourselves  only  as  it  makes  those  selves  touch 
helpfully  other  selves. 

Into  what  sort  of  friendships  are  we  putting 
our  mammon  of  unrighteousness?  There  is  a 
friendship  for  men  that  expresses  itself  in 
kindness  for  their  bodies;  and  Christians  will 
certainly  not  be  slower  than  others  to  give  to 
relieve  the  physical  wants  of  the  hungry  and 
the  sick.  There  is  a  still  higher  friendship 
with  them  that  brings  us  into  touch  with  their 
minds ;  and  Christians  have  not  been  remiss  in 
giving  liberally  to  the  institutions  that  educate 
and  train  intelligence  and  skill,  or  that  supply 
wholesome  pleasures.  But  we  must  recognise 
to-day  that  there  are  many  persons  without 
distinctive  Christian  convictions  who  are  will- 
ing to  be  friends  of  the  bodies  and  minds  of 
their  brethren,  but  who  will  go  no  farther — 
possibly  because  they  are  not  certain  of  any- 
thing more  within  themselves  that  they  can 
offer  in  friendship.  This  leaves  us,  believers 
in  the  faith  of  Jesus,  with  a  special  duty  to  be- 
friend the  spirits,  the  consciences  of  our 
brethren.  We  should  not  be  content  to  see 
them  comfortable  and  clever,  but  no  more; 


EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT    175 

healthy  in  body  and  rich  in  intellect,  but  pau- 
pers in  character.  We  must  present  ourselves 
to  be  friends  of  their  faith  by  dedicating  our 
gifts  that  none  of  God's  children,  here  at  our 
side  in  our  own  land  or  at  the  ends  of  the  earth, 
shall  be  strangers  to  our  most  enriching  Friend. 
It  is  as  Christ's  mutual  friends  that  we  shall 
come  closest  to  each  other  and  go  most  deeply 
into  each  other's  hearts.  And  in  such  friend- 
ship, whether  we  see  each  other  face  to  face  in 
the  flesh  or  not,  we  are  already  sharing  eternal 
tabernacles,  abiding  together  in  the  secret  place 
of  the  Most  High,  and  occupying  mansions  in 
the  one  Father's  everlasting  house. 


THE    NINTH    COMMANDMENT 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT 

Exodus  xx:16:  "Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness 
against  thy  neighbour  " 

Every  community  has  to  take  measures  to 
insure  the  truthfulness  of  witnesses  before  its 
courts,  and  perjury  is  everywhere  punished 
among  civihsed  men.  One  of  Israel's  codes 
contains  the  following  enactment:  "If  the 
witness  be  a  false  witness,  and  have  testified 
falsely  against  his  brother;  then  shall  ye  do 
unto  him  as  he  had  thought  to  do  unto  his 
brother;  so  shalt  thou  put  away  evil  from  the 
midst  of  thee.  And  those  that  remain  shall 
hear,  and  fear,  and  shall  henceforth  commit 
no  more  any  such  evil  in  the  midst  of  thee. 
And  thine  eye  shall  not  pity;  life  shall  go  for 
life,  eye  for  eye,  tooth  for  tooth,  hand  for 
hand,  foot  for  foot."  It  sounds  harsh;  but 
when  one  thinks  of  the  frightful  role  in  the 
world's  history  played  by  lying  informers,  and 
of  the  absolute  necessity  of  truthfulness  in 
testimony  if  human  justice  is  to  be  adminis- 

179 


180    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

tered,  one  cannot  help  admiring  this  sincere 
attempt  to  root  out  false  witness. 

Every  court  of  law  is  but  a  small  organised 
division  of  the  great  tribunal  of  public  opinion, 
that  world-court  to  which  a  few  weeks  ago 
President  Wilson  referred  for  accurate  assess- 
ment the  conflicting  protests  of  Belgians  and 
Germans  in  the  present  war.  And  in  this  court 
every  one  of  us  is  constantly  at  the  bar,  on 
the  witness  stand,  and  upon  the  bench;  at  the 
same  time  on  trial,  testifying  and  judging. 
Every  expression  of  our  opinion  of  other  peo- 
ple is  testimony,  and  must  be  as  conscientiously 
given  as  the  statements  we  are  prepared  to 
make  under  oath. 

The  Bible  is  primarily  interested  in  char- 
acter, and  the  decisions  of  this  court  of  public 
opinion  not  only  register  but  mould  character. 
The  name  men  give  us  is  something  to  which 
instinctively  we  live  up  or  down;  few  persons 
are  very  much  better  or  worse  than  they  are 
expected  to  be.  Zacchaeus  was  labelled  grasp- 
ing and  dishonest  by  his  fellow-townsmen  in 
Jericho,  and  he  fulfilled  their  anticipations ;  he 
was  treated  as  a  son  of  Abraham  by  Jesus, 
and  responded  to  that  faith.  To  injure  a  man's 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT    181 

reputation  is  to  rob  him  not  only  of  his  posi- 
tion in  the  minds  of  others,  but  of  his  own 
stimulus  to  well-doing. 

And  further  every  witness  before  this  court 
is  himself  on  trial,  and  his  evidence  concern- 
ing others  is  a  verdict  which  he  passes  upon 
himself.  What  we  see  in  men,  what  we  draw 
out  of  them,  what  we  say  of  them,  is  a  very 
telling  indication  of  what  we  are.  The 
thoughts  we  cherish  and  the  words  we  utter 
are  all  the  while  making  us,  so  that  our  wit- 
ness about  others  affects  not  them  only,  but 
ourselves. 

No  wonder,  then,  that  the  Bible  takes  up 
this  question  of  our  talk  about  one  another 
time  and  again  in  the  most  specific  and  definite 
ways.  One  psalmist  asks  the  question.  Who 
shall  dwell  with  God?  and  answers  among 
other  things,  "He  that  slandereth  not  with  his 
tongue."  Just  before  he  has  said,  "He  that 
speaketh  truth  in  his  heart,"  so  that  right 
thoughts  and  feelings,  as  well  as  just  words 
about  others  are  in  his  mind.  Slander,  in  the 
New  Testament,  goes  by  the  suggestive  Greek 
word,  "back-biting" ;  it  consists  in  saying  about 
others  what  one  dares  not  say  to  them.    Di- 


\ 


182    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

ogenes,  being  asked  what  bit  sorest,  answered 
"Of  wildbeasts  the  back-biter,  of  tame  the 
flatterer."  Slander  and  flattery  go  together; 
he  who  overpraises  to  one's  face  is  likely  to 
underrate  out  of  earshot;  both  are  forms  of 
false  witness  against  one's  neighbour. 

And  the  Bible  has  much  to  say  of  that  com- 
mon form  of  slander  that  we  call  gossip.  One 
of  the  oldest  codes  enacts  this  law:  "Thou 
shalt  not  go  up  and  down  as  a  talebearer 
among  thy  people."  George  Meredith  has  said 
that  gossip  is  a  beast  of  prey  that  does  not 
wait  for  the  death  of  the  creature  it  devours. 
It  is  a  very  prevalent  form  of  murder;  there 
are  many  conversations  like  that  reported  in 
Pope's  Rape  of  the  Lock,  where  "at  every 
word  a  reputation  dies."  Mrs.  Grundy  lives 
on  from  generation  to  generation;  she  is  still 
the  chief  talker  in  most  social  meetings,  be 
they  conversations  from  the  fire-escapes  in 
tenements  or  in  the  most  select  drawing-rooms ; 
and  she  appears  perhaps  as  frequently  in 
trousers  as  in  petticoats.  Omit  the  personali- 
ties from  the  talk  of  most  of  us,  and  what 
would  be  left?  The  Book  of  Proverbs  calls 
the  gossip  by  the  suggestive  name  of  "the  whis- 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT    183 

perer."  His  words  are  "dainty  morsels,'*  for 
men  find  them  appetising;  and  though  they 
are  "soft"  (for  the  Hebrew  word  for  "dainty" 
means  "soft"),  they  have  a  most  penetrating 
way  of  getting  into  the  very  centre  of  our 
minds  where  they  lodge — "they  go  down  into 
the  innermost  parts." 

It  takes  two  both  to  gossip  and  to  flatter, 
and  the  listener  is  as  culpable  as  the  talker. 
"Take  heed  how  ye  hear,"  said  Jesus.  We 
often  blame  other  men's  tongues  when  the  con- 
demnation belongs  equally  to  our  own  ears. 
We  get  what  we  are  interested  in  when  we  con- 
verse, or  we  soon  find  a  way  of  stopping  or 
changing  the  conversation.  What  others  think 
of  saying  to  us  is  a  fairly  accurate  measure 
of  the  impression  we  have  made  upon  them. 
Most  of  us  are  greedy  for  praise,  and  clumsily 
or  deftly  (for  skill  in  the  art  varies)  fish  for 
compliments,  and  draw  men  on  to  false  wit- 
ness. 

The  wisest  of  the  wise 
Listen  to  pretty  lies. 
And  love  to  hear  'em  told. 
Doubt  not  that  Solomon 


184    THE  TEN  CQMMANDMENTS 

Listened  to  many  a  one, 

Some  in  his  youth,  and  more  when  he  grew  old. 

If  people  gossip  to  us,  let  us  search  and  try 
our  hearts.  It  takes  no  skill  to  show  when 
one  is  bored ;  and  if  gossip  and  flattery  do  not 
bore  us,  we  are  radically  diseased  and  need 
nothing  less  than  a  new  heart  and  a  right 
spirit.  *• 

It  is  surprising  how  many  of  us  fall  into 
the  habit  of  "running  down"  other  people.  It 
is  a  cheap  and  easy  way  of  ministering  to  our 
own  vanity.  To  belittle  others  seems  relatively 
to  exalt  us.  Most  of  us  are  aware  of  being 
inconspicuous  nobodies;  we  know  that  we  are 
very  little  people — pigmies  in  ability  and  puny 
in  character.  It  is  a  hard  and  painful  process 
to  force  ourselves  to  grow;  it  is  much  simpler 
to  attempt  to  reduce  others  to  our  dimensions ; 
and  we  do  it  all  the  time.  If  someone  is  being 
heartily  praised,  we  break  in  with  our  "Yes, 
but — ."  The  weak  spots  in  others  have  a 
fatal  fascination  for  us ;  our  eyes  are  glued  to 
them.  Of  the  whole  Achilles  we  notice  only 
the  heel.  Tennyson  has  sketched  the  typical 
"runner  down"  in  Vivien,  who  contributed  not 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT    185 

a  little  to  the  breaking  up  of  the  Round  Table. 
She 

"let  her  tongue 

Rage  like  a  fire  among  the  noblest  names, 

Polluting  and  imputing  her  whole  self. 

Defaming  and  defacing  till  she  left 

Not  even  Lancelot  brave  nor  Galahad  clean." 


One  of  the  most  difficult  clauses  for  most  of 
us  in  the  Thirteenth  Chapter  of  First  Corin- 
thians runs:  "Love  thinketh,"  that  is  'Hmpu- 
teth  no  evil." 

Another  phase  of  false  witness  against  which 
the  Bible  warns  is  connected  with  controversy. 
The  Book  of  Proverbs  again  and  again  links 
a  fool  with  contention.  It  seems  to  be  next 
to  impossible  to  disagree  with  others  and  do 
justice  to  them.  The  mere  fact  that  they  dif- 
fer from  us  argues  to  our  conceit  that  there 
must  be  something  wrong  either  with  their 
brains  or  their  consciences,  or  oftener  with 
both.  It  is  very  rare  that  a  serious  difference 
of  opinion  does  not  bring  with  it  personal  de- 
preciation. Think  of  those  whose  views  we  do 
not  like,  and  how  many  of  them  do  we  hon- 
estly admire?    And  particularly  when  our  own 


186    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

reasoning  is  not  very  strong,  we  find  ourselves 
tempted  to  disparage  our  opponents.  Rich- 
ard Hooker,  who  in  the  midst  of  a  contentious 
age  won  for  himself  the  adjective,  "the  judi- 
cious Hooker,"  in  replying  to  one  of  his  dis- 
putants says:  "Your  next  argument  consists 
of  railing  and  of  reason ;  to  your  railing  I  say 
nothing;  to  your  reasons  I  say  what  follows." 
And  on  another  occasion  he  made  the  state- 
ment: "There  will  come  a  time  when  three 
words  uttered  with  charity  and  meekness  shall 
receive  a  more  blessed  reward  than  three  thou- 
sand volumes  written  with  disdainful  sharp- 
ness of  wit."  How  seldom  one  picks  up  a 
pamphlet  or  a  newspaper  article  combating 
opinions  which  does  not  abuse  those  who  hold 
them !  Sometimes  the  abuse  is  clever;  it  makes 
the  adversary  appear  ridiculous;  but  it  is  not 
just;  it  is  false  witness.  After  John  Wesley 
had  read  a  tract  upon  an  interpretation  of  the 
astronomy  in  the  early  chapters  of  Genesis, 
he  entered  in  his  Journal:  "Is  it  well  thus  to 
run  down  all  that  differ  from  us?  Dr.  Pye 
is  an  ingenious  man,  but  so  is  Dr.  Robinson 
also;  so  are  twenty  more,  although  they  un- 
derstand Moses  in  a  quite  different  manner." 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT    187 

There  must  be  controversies ;  it  is  only  through 
the  friction  of  intellects  that  we  light  the  torch 
of  truth.  Occasions  occur  when  we  have  to 
contend  with  all  our  mental  might  for  our 
convictions.  But  at  such  times  we  need  to  say- 
to  ourselves  most  emphatically:  "Thou  shalt 
not  bear  false  witness  against  thy  neighbour." 
We  are  bidden  speak  the  truth  in  love ;  and  if 
we  cannot  speak  it  in  love,  we  must  keep  silent. 
Truth  spoken  in  any  other  way  is  uncon- 
vincing. 

The  Bible  cautions  those  whose  sense  of 
humour  may  lead  them  too  far  in  playing  with 
the  truth  about  other  people.  "As  a  madman 
who  casteth  firebrands,  arrows  and  death,  so  is 
the  man  that  deceiveth  his  neighbour  and  saith, 
Am  I  not  in  sport?"  Truth  about  men  is  so 
sacred  that  it  is  irreverent  to  trifle  with  it, 
exactly  as  we  shrink  from  joking  in  the  things 
we  say  about  God.  In  the  good  stories  which 
we  tell  concerning  other  people,  we  have  to 
check  ourselves  and  be  sure  that  there  is  no 
malice  in  them.  By  no  means  all  humour  is 
entirely  kind ;  and  while  many  men  are  helped 
by  being  laughed  at,  love,  and  only  love,  can 
laugh  helpfully. 


188    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

And  this  brings  us  to  Jesus'  reinterpretation 
of  this  ancient  commandment.  "Judge  not," 
He  said,  "that  ye  be  not  judged."  In  our  more 
thoughtful  moods  it  may  seem  strange  that  He 
had  to  say,  "Judge  not."  There  is  scarcely 
anything  which  we  men  are  less  fitted  to  do. 
To  the  end  the  closest  of  us  remain  compara- 
tive strangers  to  each  other.  We  know  next 
to  nothing  of  the  real  significance  of  the  lives 
that  are  lived  at  our  side.  Some  of  you  may 
have  read  the  striking  description  Heine  gives 
of  the  life  of  Immanuel  Kant  in  the  old  city 
of  Koenigsberg:  "He  lived  an  abstract,  me- 
chanical, old-bachelor  existence,  in  a  quiet  re- 
mote street.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  great 
cathedral-clock  of  that  city  accomplished  its 
day's  work  in  a  less  passionate  and  more  reg- 
ular way  than  its  countryman,  Immanuel  Kant. 
Rising  from  bed,  coffee-drinking,  writing,  lec- 
turing, eating,  walking,  everything  had  its 
fixed  time;  and  the  neighbours  knew  that  it 
must  be  exactly  half-past  four  when  they  saw 
Professor  Kant  in  his  grey  coat,  with  his  cane 
in  his  hand,  step  out  of  his  house  door,  and 
move  toward  the  little  lime-tree  avenue,  which 
is  named  after  him — the  Professor's  Walk. 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT    189 

Eight  times  he  walked  up  and  down  that  walk 
at  every  season  of  the  year,  and  when  the 
weather  was  bad,  or  the  grey  clouds  threatened 
rain,  his  servant,  old  Lampe,  was  seen  anx- 
iously following  him  with  a  large  umbrella 
under  his  arm,  like  an  image  of  Providence. 
Strange  contrast  between  the  outer  life  of  the 
man  and  his  world-destroying  thought!  Of  a 
truth,  if  the  citizens  of  Koenigsberg  had  had 
any  inkling  of  that  thought  they  would  have 
shuddered  before  him  as  before  an  executioner. 
But  the  good  people  saw  nothing  in  him  but  a 
professor  of  philosophy,  and  when  he  passed 
at  the  appointed  hour  they  gave  him  friendly 
greetings — and  set  their  watches."  And  we 
know  as  little  of  the  inner  life  of  those  of 
whom  day  after  day  we  catch  sight  and  form 
our  superficial  judgments. 

Jesus  was  not  forbidding  such  superficial 
judgments.  He  knew  that  so  long  as  men  live 
together  they  must  form  opinions  of  one  an- 
other. We  have  to  "size  up"  men's  abilities, 
dispositions,  trustworthiness,  in  connection 
with  the  positions  they  fill.  We  have  to  esti- 
mate their  value  as  friends.  We  have  to  make 
up  our  minds  how  they  will  feel  or  think  about 


190     THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

this,  that  or  the  other  matter,  in  which  we  have 
dealings  with  them.  Life  is  a  constant  series 
of  such  judgments.  Jesus  judged  the  men 
whom  he  chose  to  be  His  followers;  and  the 
amazing  thing  is  that  He  valued  them  so 
highly.  Recall  His  expectations  of  Simon 
Peter — "on  this  rock";  of  James  and  John — 
"the  cup  that  I  drink,  ye  shall  drink";  even 
of  Judas  Iscariot,  for  we  have  every  reason  to 
suppose  that  he,  too,  was  selected  in  the  faith 
that  he  would  be  loyal.  "Love  believeth  all 
things,  hopeth  all  things."  And  when  Jesus 
said,  "Judge  not,"  He  was  speaking  to  would- 
be  good  men,  and  warning  them  against  what 
is  perhaps  the  commonest  and  worst  fault  of 
good  people — allowing  themselves  to  become 
censorious  and  to  undervalue  men  and  women. 
A  sincerely  good  man,  whose  long  public 
life  constantly  forced  him  to  form  judgments 
of  other  men — Mr.  Gladstone — once  wrote: 
"Nothing  grows  upon  me  so  much  with 
lengthening  life  as  the  sense  of  the  difficulties, 
or  rather  the  impossibilities,  with  which  we 
are  beset  whenever  we  attempt  to  take  to  our- 
selves the  functions  of  the  Eternal  Judge  (ex- 
cept in  reference  to  ourselves  where  judg- 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT    191 

ment  is  committed  to  us ) ,  and  to  form  any  ac- 
curate idea  of  relative  merit  and  demerit,  good 
and  evil,  in  actions.  The  shades  of  the  rain- 
bow are  not  so  nice,  and  the  sands  of  the  sea- 
shore are  not  such  a  multitude,  as  are  all  the 
subtle,  shifting,  blending,  forms  of  thought  and 
of  circumstance  that  go  to  determine  the  char- 
acter of  us  and  our  acts."  And  he  adds,  "But 
there  is  One  that  seeth  plainly  and  judgeth 
righteously."  The  difficulty  is  that  we  are  all 
the  while  usurping  God's  place,  and  passing 
judgments  on  those  whom  we  are  not  called 
on  to  justify  or  condemn.  Any  unnecessary 
expressions  of  opinion  about  other  people  are 
to  be  avoided  as  perilous  infringements  on 
God's  prerogative. 

And  it  is  here  that  good  people  are  so  often 
very  far  from  good.  Maurice  once  wrote  to 
his  mother;  "Of  all  spirits  I  believe  the  spirit 
of  judging  is  the  worst,  and  it  has  had  the  rule 
of  me  I  cannot  tell  you  how  dreadfully  and 
how  long.  Looking  in  other  people  for  the 
faults  which  I  had  a  secret  consciousness  were 
in  myself,  where  I  should  have  been  sure  to 
find  them  all;  this,  I  find,  has  more  hindered 
my    progress    in    love    and    gentleness    and 


192    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

sympathy  than  all  things  else.  I  never  knew 
what  the  words  *Judge  not  that  ye  be  not 
judged'  meant  before;  now  they  seem  to  me 
some  of  the  most  awful,  necessary  and  beauti- 
ful in  the  whole  Word  of  God."  A  recent 
novelist  has  described  one  of  her  characters  as 
follows :  "Discrimination  was  the  note  of  her 
being.  For  every  Christian  some  Christian 
precepts  are  obsolete.  For  Lady  Lucy  that 
which  runs,  *  Judge  not,'  had  never  been  alive." 
And  when  circumstances  compel  us  to  form 
and  express  judgments  about  other  people,  we 
must  clearly  recall  that  in  our  limited  human 
way  we  are  attempting  one  of  God's  functions, 
and  must  remind  ourselves  how  our  Father 
judges.  In  Luke's  account  of  Jesus'  words  the 
sequence  runs:  "Be  ye  merciful  even  as  your 
Father  is  merciful.  And  judge  not."  The 
critical  attitude  is  essentially  ungodlike.  It  is 
worth  remembering  that  so  keen  an  analyst  of 
character  as  Shakespeare  puts  upon  the  lips  of 
his  worst  villain,  lago,  the  sentence:  "I  am 
nothing  if  not  critical."  And  the  only  cure  for 
the  critical  spirit  is  a  very  large  dose  of  love. 
We  have  to  discriminate  or  we  have  no  taste, 
but  it  must  be  love's  discrimination.    Landor 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT     193 

once,  repenting  of  some  censures  he  had  passed 
on  Milton,  said  to  Southey,  "Are  we  not  some- 
what like  two  little  beggar-boys  who,  forget- 
ting that  they  are  in  tatters,  sit  noticing  a  few 
stains  and  rents  in  their  father's  raiment?" 
"But,"  replied  Southey,  ''they  love  him/'  And 
love  quahfies  us,  as  it  quahfies  our  God,  for 
judging,  where  we  must  judge.  "Nothing," 
says  Faber,  the  hymn-writer  and  good  phy- 
sician of  souls,  "deepens  the  mind  so  much  as 
the  habit  of  charity.  Charity  cannot  feed  on 
surfaces.  Its  instinct  always  is  to  go  deeper. 
Roots  are  its  natural  food." 

And  this  explains  why  Jesus  added:  "Judge 
not,  and  ye  shall  not  be  judged."  It  is  not 
that  God  in  an  arbitrary  fashion  will  pay  us 
for  being  charitable  in  our  opinions  with  an 
equal  charitableness  in  judging  us;  but  that 
the  constant  use  of  love  in  our  estimates  of 
others  will  actually  alter  us,  deepen  our  na- 
tures, broaden  our  sympathies,  feed  us  with  di- 
vine impulses,  and  develop  in  us  godlike  char- 
acters that  cannot  be  condemned.  "With  what 
measure  ye  mete,,  it  shall  be  measured  to  you 
again,"  because  the  measure  we  use  becomes 
our  capacity,  and  God  is  always  giving  us  just 


194     THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

as  much  as  we  (fan  contain.  To  be  generous 
in  our  opinions  of  others  is  to  enlarge  our  own 
natures  to  receive  the  generosity  of  God;  to 
forgive  is  to  have  room  for  the  inflow  of  His 
forgiveness,  to  judge  with  His  love  is  to  be 
capable  of  taking  in  His  fulness  and  becoming 
like  Him  who  cannot  be  harshly  judged. 

Then  Jesus  adds  the  saying  about  first 
casting  out  the  beam  from  our  own  eye  before 
we  can  look  at  the  mote  in  our  brother's  eye. 
In  other  words,  be  strict  with  yourself  and 
you  will  be  lenient  in  your  judgment  of  others. 
Most  critical  persons  are  hypocritical;  they 
overrate  themselves  and  then  underrate  others. 
There  is  a  very  deceptive  modesty  that  takes 
the  form  of  running  ourselves  down  in  our 
talk  with  others  in  order  to  have  them  exalt 
us  in  reply,  and  tickle  our  vanity.  All  talk 
about  our  own  merit  or  demerit,  save  to  God, 
is  probably  to  be  avoided;  but  that  does  not 
mean  that  we  are  not  to  take  ourselves  in  hand 
and  give  ourselves  a  rigid  and  searching 
scrutiny.  "Why  considerest  not  thou  the  beam 
that  is  in  thine  own  eye?"  said  Jesus.  It  is  to 
be  carefully  considered,  scanned,  hated,  cast 
out,    however  painful   the    operation    of   re- 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT     195 

moval  is.     Severity  with  self  is  the  only  safe- 
guard of  love  with  others. 

And  there  is  still  one  other  enlargement  of 
the  meaning  of  this  ancient  commandment 
which  we  owe  to  Jesus.  Who  is  the  * 'neigh- 
bour" against  whom  we  are  forbid  to  bear  false 
witness  ?  Jesus  called  "neighbour"  anyone  who 
needed  what  He  had  to  bestow.  It  is  always 
easier  to  undervalue  those  we  have  never 
seen  than  those  who  are  close  at  hand.  The 
death  of  a  thousand  soldiers  in  Poland  or  at 
Tsing  Tao  means  less  to  us  than  a  single  life 
lost  on  our  own  subway.  Our  valuations  vary 
inversely  with  the  distance  of  the  person  we 
are  valuing.  We  feel  pained  that  some  relative 
or  friend  is  without  the  stimulus  of  our  Chris- 
tian faith ;  we  sometimes  feel  that  a  Chinaman 
or  a  Hindu  can  get  on  with  religious  inspira- 
tions considerably  less.  It  is  the  commonest 
thing  to  hear  nominal  Christians  declaring  that 
other  faiths  (of  which  usually  they  know  very 
little)  are  quite  good  enough  for  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Asia  or  Africa,  while  they  consider 
the  faith  of  Christ  none  too  good  for  them  and 

theirs.    It  is  a  pathetic  form  of  bearing  false 
witness  against  our  neighbour.     What  does 


196    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

Christ,  sincerely  accepted,  make  out  of  even 
semi-civilised  men  in  a  single  generation? 
What  are  the  results  of  Christianity  in  the 
second  and  third  generations?  Let  us  be  just. 
We  have  no  occasion  to  depreciate  the  religious 
and  moral  inspirations  given  by  other  faiths; 
we  are  not  likely  to  overestimate  the  worth 
of  such  unused  Christianity  as  permits  its 
nominal  devotees  to  slaughter  each  other;  but 
we  must  not  be  unfair  in  our  judgments  of 
the  capacities  of  races  as  yet  unchristianized ; 
and  above  all  we  must  not  be  unjust  to  the 
transforming  influence  of  Him,  whom  we  call 
our  Saviour.  What  are  other  men  to  us  Chris- 
tians— men  at  our  side,  men  in  the  ends  of  the 
earth?  Brethren,  for  whose  sake  Christ  died. 
What  is  Christ  to  us?  Each  must  answer  out 
of  his  own  experience.  Not  to  believe  that  all 
men  are  capable  of  attaining  sonship  with  God 
through  Him,  and  that  He  is  able  to  supply 
their  every  need  out  of  His  fulness,  is  the 
most  serious  and  most  thoroughly  unchristian 
form  of  bearing  false  witness  against  both  our 
earthly  and  our  Heavenly  neighbour. 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT 

Exodus  xx:17:  "Thou  shalt  not  covet  anything  that 
is  thy  neighbour's/' 

The  Ten  Commandments  are  represented  as 
spoken  at  Sinai  to  tribesmen  on  the  point  of 
invading  the  land  of  Canaan  and  capturing  the 
towns,  vineyards  and  possessions  of  its  inhab- 
itants. One  wonders  that  it  never  occurred  to 
any  of  them  that  this  injunction,  "Thou  shalt 
not  covet,"  had  an  immediate  application  to 
their  greedy  desire  to  expropriate  the  Canaan- 
ites.  A  Hebrew  would  have  answered 
promptly  that  the  dwellers  in  Canaan  were  not 
neighbours;  only  fellow-Israelites  were  neigh- 
bours. But  unhappily.  Christians,  to  whom  in 
theory  all  men  are  neighbours,  have  not  felt 
that  this  commandment  forbade  a  nation  cov- 
eting the  territory,  or  trade,  or  prestige  of  an- 
other. Some  "place  in  the  sun"  which  is  occu- 
pied by  a  neighbour  people  has  been  and  still 
is  the  underlying  motive  that  sends  a  nation 
to  war.    So  universally  has  a  stronger  people 

•  199 


200    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

dispossessed  a  weaker,  a  civilised  nation  used 
its  superior  intelligence  and  improved  appli- 
ances of  fighting  to  seize  the  lands  of  a  less  civ- 
ilised, a  vigorous  race  mastered  a  decadent  or 
backward  race,  that  we  are  at  a  loss  to  fancy 
how  otherwise  the  world's  history  might  have 
run  its  course.  Coveting  has  been  taken  for 
granted;  it  has  been  labelled  national  ambi- 
tion, and  held  up  as  part  of  the  creed  of  every 
patriot.  It  has  been  assumed  that  a  country 
was  justified  in  wanting  and  in  taking  every 
square  inch  of  the  earth's  surface  over  which 
it  could  plant  its  flag.  Whatever  may  be  said 
to  condone  the  actions  of  the  past,  the  awak- 
ened conscience  of  to-day  will  surely  insist 
that  a  land,  be  it  the  Philippines,  or  India,  or 
Korea,  or  Belgium,  or  Bohemia,  or  Poland,  or 
any  other  country  with  a  national  conscious- 
ness, belongs  to  its  own  inhabitants.  It  may 
not  yet  be  ready  to  keep  itself  unhelped,  but 
it  must  not  be  held  by  another  land  against 
its  own  will  and  used  for  another's  interest. 
Only  as  this  ancient  commandment,  "Thou 
shalt  not  covet  anything  that  is  thy  neigh- 
bour's" is  graven  on  the  hearts  of  nations  have 
we  a  lasting  basis  for  peace.     No  patriotism 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT    201 

without  it  is  Christian,  or,  for  that  matter,  even 
truly  Jewish,  according  to  an  international 
application  of  the  Decalogue.  No  satisfactory 
world-tribunal  will  be  erected  to  adjudicate 
the  differences  of  nations  until  the  social 
conscience  of  the  represented  powers  feels 
the  imperative  of  this  ancient  moral  prin- 
ciple. 

While  the  Israelites  did  not  apply  this  com- 
mandment to  their  dealings  with  other  peoples, 
the  Bible  is  full  of  instances  of  individuals 
who  are  censured  for  breaking  it — Achan  with 
the  Babylonish  mantle,  the  shekels  of  silver 
and  the  wedge  of  gold  among  the  booty  of 
Jericho,  David  with  Bethsheba,  the  wife  of 
Uriah  the  Hittite,  Ahab  with  Naboth's  vine- 
yard, and  a  host  more.  But  it  leaves  us  to 
define  for  ourselves  what  coveting  is  forbid- 
den. **Covet  earnestly,"  it  bids  us,  "the  best 
gifts."  How  shall  we  distinguish  the  two 
kinds  of  coveting — self-seeking  from  laudable 
ambition? 

This  commandment  has  been  used  to  stifle 
social  restlessness.  It  has  been  interpreted  to 
mean  that  a  man  must  be  content  with  what  he 
and  his  already  possess;  they  are  not  to  de- 


202    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

sire  the  advantages  and  comforts  of  the  more 
fortunately  circumstanced.  This  is  a  very- 
convenient  application  for  the  ''haves,"  but 
hardly  satisfactory  to  the  "have-nots."  We 
must  recall  that  the  Bible  regards  everything 
as  primarily  family  property,  and  that  the  in- 
dividual's ownership  is  conditioned  upon  the 
judgment  of  the  family  that  he  renders  a  com- 
mensurate service,  or  that  he  needs  his  por- 
tion for  his  good.  One  may  rightly  covet  for 
the  disinherited  a  larger  share  in  the  house- 
hold's goods,  and  for  some  of  the  wealthy  a 
fuller  bearing  of  the  household's  burdens. 
Such  social  coveting  is  nothing  but  love.  But 
the  personal  desire  of  some  individual  to  take 
from  another  that  which  he  now  owns  and 
make  it  his  own  is  never  a  worthy  aim.  No 
man  is  entitled  to  set  up  his  private  opinion 
that  it  would  be  better  for  him  to  have  that 
which  is  now  another  man's,  and  better  for 
the  other  man  to  be  without  it.  These  are 
social  judgments,  which  the  community,  not  in- 
dividuals, is  entitled  to  pronounce.  What 
any  man  lawfully  holds,  he  holds  from  the 
community  under  God ;  if  the  community  takes 
it  from  him — well  and  good;  if  some  private 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT     203 

person  casts  longing  eyes  upon  it  and  wants 
it  for  himself,  that  is  coveting  a  neighbour's 
possessions. 

And  the  Bible  shows  us  in  a  hundred  ways 
how  readily  men  set  their  hearts  on  that  which 
is  another's,  and  how  by  so  doing  we  degrade 
ourselves.  Time  and  again  it  links  covetous- 
ness  with  uncleanness.  In  the  commandment 
itself  wanting  a  neighbour's  house  or  ox  is  set 
side  by  side  with  wanting  his  wife.  We  con- 
demn the  foul  desire  of  the  would-be  adul- 
terer; and  the  Bible  tries  to  make  us  feel  the 
foulness  of  all  desires  for  that  which  belongs 
to  others. 

St.  Paul's  letters  repeatedly  contain  lists 
that  run:  "Fornication,  uncleanness,  passion, 
evil  desire,  and  covetousness ;''  "no  fornicator, 
nor  unclean  person,  nor  covetous  man."  There 
is  a  genuine  kinship  between  these  vices.  In 
the  chronology  of  morals  it  often  happens  that 
the  licentious  young  man  becomes  in  middle 
age  the  money  lover;  covetousness  has  been 
called  "promoted  vice,  lust  superannuated." 
The  desire  to  possess  and  enjoy  what  is  an- 
other's is  the  same  dirty  desire  whether  its 
object   be   another  man's  wife,   or  his   posi- 


204    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

tion,  his  fortune,  his  reputation,  his  busi- 
ness. 

And  it  is  here  that  competition  is  most 
clearly  seen  as  an  immoral  motive.  Men  may- 
vie  with  each  other  for  business  efficiency; 
that  is  coveting  earnestly  the  best  gifts. 
Rivalry  between  workmen  as  to  who  can  do 
the  better  job,  or  finish  it  more  rapidly,  is  an 
entirely  legitimate  and  praiseworthy  rivalry. 
Firms  may  contend  in  the  endeavour  to  render 
the  community  better  service,  and  that  is  love's 
contest.  But  the  moment  a  workman  deliber- 
ately sets  out  so  to  fulfil  his  work  that  he 
supplants  some  other  workman,  or  a  firm  con- 
sciously attempts  to  get  the  customers  of  an- 
other firm,  unclean  covetousness  enters  and  de- 
grades the  motive.  In  commercial  competi- 
tion the  Christian  must  distinguish  sharply 
between  coveting  the  best  gifts  with  which  to 
serve  and  coveting  that  which  is  a  neighbour's. 

The  great  painters  and  poets  have  confirmed 
the  Bible's  feeling  that  covetousness  is  un- 
clean. Giotto,  for  instance,  paints  Envy  as  a 
figure  of  a  woman  partially  bestialised  with 
fingers  terminating  in  claws ;  and  in  the  Faerie 
Queene  Spenser  tells  how 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT    205 

"Malicious  Envy  rode 

Upon  a  ravenous  wolfe^  and  still  did  chaw 

Between  his  cankered  teeth  a  venomous  tode. 

That  all  the  poison  ran  about  his  jaw. 

All  in  a  kirtle  of  discolored  say  (serge) 

He  clothed  was,  ypainted  full  of  eies. 

And  in  his  bosom  secretely  there  lay 

An  hateful  snake,  the  which  his  tail  uptyes 

In  many  folds,  and  mortal  sting  implyes." 

There  is  something  essentially  sub-human  in 
setting  longing  eyes  on  that  which  is  somebody 
else's;  it  is  brute-like  to  do  that. 

This  commandment  is  the  climax  of  the  law ; 
it  goes  deeper  than  any  of  the  other  com- 
mandments. Jesus  had  to  take  some  of  the 
others  and  deepen  them  for  His  disciples  in 
order  that  they  might  feel  that  a  hateful  feel- 
ing was  murder  and  a  lustful  thought  adultery ; 
but  He  did  not  need  to  touch  this  command- 
ment. It  went  down  of  itself  into  men's  secret 
thoughts  and  f eehngs ;  they  might  refrain  from 
theft  or  uncleanness;  but  if  the  covetous  de- 
sire was  there,  they  were  condemned.  "Thou 
shalt  not  covet  anything  that  is  thy  neigh- 
bour's" is  simply  the  negative  of  "thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself." 

And  it  was  the  searching  character  of  this 


206    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

commandment  that  made  it  play  a  significant 
role  in  one  of  the  greatest  religious  experiences 
in  the  Bible.  Saul  of  Tarsus,  the  devout  boy, 
brought  up  in  the  strict  faith  and  morals  of 
his  fathers,  and  surpassing  his  fellow  students 
in  Gamaliel's  classroom  in  earnestness,  could 
listen  to  all  the  other  nine  commandments 
with  his  withers  unwrung;  but  the  tenth 
probed  far  into  his  conscience  and  left  him 
writhing.  *'The  law  said,  *Thou  shalt  not 
covet,'  "  he  tells  us  in  a  frank  chapter  of  auto- 
biography, "and  sin  wrought  in  me  all  manner 
of  coveting."  One  cannot  help  wishing  that 
he  had  not  been  so  general,  but  had  drawn 
aside  the  veil  of  reticence  and  told  us  specifi- 
cally what  he  longed  after.  It  is  not  likely 
to  have  been  money,  for  his  chosen  career  was 
not  that  of  a  wealth-seeker ;  but  money  can  do 
so  many  fine  things  that  Saul  may  have  wished 
for  a  fortune.  It  may  have  been  sensual  pas- 
sion ;  and  this  will  account  for  his  strong  words 
about  buffeting  his  body  and  keeping  it  under. 
There  is  a  crater  of  emotion  in  this  man  that 
becomes  active  in  his  Christian  days  in  glow- 
ing devotion  and  fiery  indignation ;  and  it  may 
easily 'have  been  volcanic  with  other  passions 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT     207 

at  an  earlier  period.  Or  it  may  have  been  the 
much  more  spiritual  lust  for  reputation  and  in- 
fluence and  power.  Pride  and  coveting  are 
close  kin ;  and  this  brilliant  student  with  great 
gifts  of  leadership  and  utterance  must  have 
had  no  small  battle  with  self-conceit  and  the 
desire  to  be  in  the  prominent  places  held  by- 
others.  Perhaps  his  phrase,  "all  manner  of 
coveting,"  is  meant  to  cover  his  desire  always  to 
be  in  the  first  place  of  recognition  and  praise 
and  influence,  and  the  jealous  chafing  of  his 
spirit  when  others  were  more  thought  of  and 
spoken  about  and  followed.  And  it  was  his 
inability  to  cope  with  covetousness  that  ship- 
wrecked his  sincere  attempt  to  work  out  his 
own  righteousness.  He  thought  he  was  rea- 
sonably successful  with  the  other  command- 
merits  ;  but  with  his  own  feelings,  longings,  am- 
bitions, he  could  do  nothing.  "When  the  com- 
mandment came,  sin  revived,  and  I  died." 

How  thankful  we  must  ever  be  for  this 
honest  man's  confession  of  his  mastering  diffi- 
culty! How  close  he  comes  to  us  all!  "All 
manner  of  coveting" — ^let  conscience  work  for 
a  moment  and  recall  how  we  craved  the  ad- 
miring words  spoken  to  another,  and  envied 


208    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

his  charm,  his  ability,  his  capacity  for  evoking 
affection;  how  we  set  our  heart  on  the  com- 
forts, or  the  social  prestige,  or  the  personal 
popularity  we  saw  someone  else  enjoying,  and 
begrudged  them  to  him  in  our  selfish  wish  to 
have  them  for  ourselves ;  how  we  have  actually 
schemed  to  get  ahead  of  another  in  a  friend's 
trust  or  esteem,  in  an  official  position,  in  a 
lucrative  opportunity.  There  is  hardly  a  busi- 
ness office  that  does  not  witness  coveting — 
one  man  wishing  himself  in  another's  shoes; 
or  a  home  that  does  not  see  a  covetous  love 
wishing  its  dear  ones  to  outdistance  in  favour 
or  power  some  other's  beloved;  or  a  meet- 
ing where  a  covetous  desire  to  outshine  an- 
other is  not  evident  in  the  course  of  one  or  a 
dozen  persons  present;  or  a  social  entertain- 
ment that  does  not  display  a  covetous  craving 
for  attention  or  applause  or  honour.  "All  man- 
ner of  coveting" — one  need  not  specify,  for 
conscience  will  itemise  the  details  for  every 
one  of  us.  There  is  always  someone  suffi- 
ciently near  us  in  ability  or  social  position  or 
similarity  of  gifts  to  constitute  him  a  rival, 
and  provoke  the  green-eyed  monster  within  us. 
"Sin  revived,  and  I  died." 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT     209 

And  to  Paul  in  his  extremity  came  One 
whose  outstanding  distinction  lay  in  having  no 
place  whatsoever  for  covetousness,  One  who 
was  self-emptied;  and  in  trustful  loyalty  to 
Him  Paul  became  ali^A  But  he  hardly  knew 
himself;  it  w^as  not  ^PT  that  lived;  he  could 
not  recognise  himself  with  covetousness  no 
longer  dominant ;  it  was  the  uncoveting  Christ 
alive  in  him. 

Although  so  free  from  personal  desires  that, 
as  one  sympathetic  interpreter  tells  us,  the 
Prince  of  this  world  found  nothing  in  Him, 
Jesus  knew  the  perils  of  acquisitiveness  in  His 
brethren.  What  a  man  wants.  He  felt,  he 
serves.  He  saw  men  wanting  money,  want- 
ing it  no  doubt  for  a  great  many  mixed  mo- 
tives, lofty  and  base,  just  as  men  want  it  to- 
day; and  that  desire  made  them  in  His  eyes 
worshippers  of  mammon.  With  fine  power  of 
analysis  He  unbared  the  subtle  results  that  fol- 
lowed in  character:  a  hardening,  for  a  suc- 
cessful money-maker  has  to  suppress  his  finer 
sympathies,  and  the  result  is  a  Dives  living 
sumptuously  while  a  Lazarus,  neglected,  lies 
not  far  away ;  a  self-sufficiency,  for  money  can 
do  so  many  things  that  its  possessors  uncon- 


210    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

sciously  settle  down  with  a  comfortable  sense 
of  security — "Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods  laid 
up  for  many  years ;"  a  self-indulgence,  because 
even  the  most  generous  of  well-to-do  persons 
has  an  almost  overwhAning  temptation  to  be 
kind  to  himself,  whal^^ould  be  luxury  in 
others  appears  ordinary  avoidance  of  mean- 
ness in  him,  and  everything  in  men's  expecta- 
tion says  to  him:  "take  thine  ease,  eat,  drink, 
and  be  merry."  "How  hardly  shall  they  that 
have  riches,"  said  the  frankest  and  most  plain- 
spoken  of  masters,  "enter  the  Kingdom  of 
heaven."  Fine  as  may  be  the  aims  to  which  we 
would  put  wealth,  its  possessor  must  realise 
that  he  owns  perilous  stuff ;  in  a  thousand  ways 
it  may  ruin  him.  And  to  long  for  money,  high 
as  is  the  purpose  in  which  we  wish  to  employ 
it,  is  a  most  dangerous  longing.  "The  love  of 
money  is  the  root  of  all  kinds  of  evil,"  says 
the  truest  interpreter  of  the  Lord's  mind. 

But  it  is  also  just  to  remember  that  while 
Jesus  spoke  of  money  as  unrighteous  mam- 
mon,— "unrighteous",  perhaps,  because  in  a 
world  so  unlovingly  ordered  as  ours  its  acqui- 
sition and  possession  can  hardly  fail  to  be  with- 
out injustice  to  someone,  or  because  it  is  so 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT   211 

likely  to  injure  its  owner — He  also  insisted 
that  it  had  a  very  important  moral  bearing.  "If, 
therefore,  ye  have  not  been  faithful  in  the  un- 
righteous mammon,  who  will  commit  to  your 
trust  the  true  riches?"  The  proper  handling 
of  money  is  an  essential  part  of  man's  educa- 
tion. Sir  Henry  Taylor,  in  his  Notes  on  Life, 
has  written:  "So  manifold  are  the  bearings 
of  money  upon  the  lives  and  characters  of  man- 
kind, that  an  insight  which  should  search  out 
the  life  of  a  man  in  his  pecuniary  relations 
would  penetrate  into  almost  every  cranny  of 
his  nature.  He  who  knows,  like  St.  Paul,  how 
to  spare  and  how  to  abound,  has  a  great  knowl- 
edge; for  if  we  take  account  of  all  the  virtues 
with  which  money  is  mixed  up — honesty,  jus- 
tice, generosity,  charity,  frugality,  forethought, 
self-sacrifice,  and  of  their  correlative  vices, 
it  is  a  knowledge  which  goes  near  to  cover  the 
length  and  breadth  of  humanity,  and  a  right 
measure  in  getting,  saving,  spending,  giving, 
taking,  lending,  borrowing,  and  bequeathing, 
would  almost  argue  a  perfect  man."  Small 
wonder,  then,  that  in  Jesus'  judgment  a  right 
handling  of  money  is  a  conclusive  test  of  fit- 
ness for  the  possession  of  true  riches. 


212    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

And  in  Jesus'  mind  this  Tenth  Command- 
ment was  indissolubly  connected  with  the  First, 
so  that  the  Decalogue  for  Him  began  and 
ended  on  the  same  note.  A  man  whose  heart 
was  set  on  acquiring  wealth,  no  matter  what 
lofty  purpose  he  had  in  mind  for  it,  was  put- 
ting another  god  up  beside  the  living  Father 
on  the  throne  of  his  life.  He  was  giving  some- 
thing else  a  consideration,  a  trust,  a  service, 
that  belonged  to  God  alone.  "Ye  cannot  serve 
God  and  mammon."  And  in  entire  accord 
with  the  Master,  Paul  constantly  calls  a  cov- 
etous man  an  idolater. 

We  are  back,  then,  where  we  started — to 
Luther's  definition  of  what  it  means  to  have 
a  God:  "Whatever  thy  heart  clings  to  and 
relies  on,  that  is  properly  thy  God."  Our 
danger  lies  in  putting  things  or  people  in  God's 
place,  longing  for  and  pinning  our  faith  to 
something  less  than  the  Most  High.  We  have 
to  remind  ourselves  again  and  again  how 
meagre  was  the  outfit  of  Jesus — He  had  prac- 
tically nothing  but  a  conviction  and  a  charac- 
ter; and  how  entirely  sufficient  that  outfit 
proved.  To  be  sure  He  did  not  hesitate  to 
employ  everything  that  happened  to  be  at  His 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT     213 

disposal,  but  He  was  always  detached  from 
it;  His  heart  was  never  set  on  it  as  indispen- 
sable. If  someone  invited  Him  to  a  banquet 
He  accepted,  and  enjoyed  so  heartily  what 
was  offered  Him  that  critics  called  Him  glut- 
tonous and  winebibber.  If  art  could  make 
His  message  carry.  He  took  pains  to  be  su- 
premely artistic,  and  clothed  His  thought  in 
phrases  of  undying  beauty.  If  the  affection 
and  loyalty  of  men  could  further  His  cause, 
He  used  to  the  full  the  friendship  of  a  Peter, 
an  Andrew,  a  John.  But  He  longed  for  noth- 
ing as  essential  to  His  purpose  and  life.  If 
men's  hospitality  turned  to  rejection  and  the 
tragic  prosecution  of  the  last  days,  if  He  could 
no  longer  get  a  hearing  for  His  most  beautiful 
parable  and  was  reduced  to  silence,  if  one 
disciple  turned  traitor  and  the  rest  ran  away, 
there  was  no  diminution  in  His  confidence,  no 
regretful  longing  for  other  means  to  accom- 
plish His  end,  but  complete  contentment  with 
the  stern  and  awful  necessity  of  enduring  the 
cross.  If  He  had  the  righteous  and  loving  God, 
that  seemed  to  fill  His  every  need.  The  only 
covetous  cry  was  the  prayer  for  Him:  "My 
God,  My  God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  Me?" 


214    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

"Ye  cannot  serve  God  and  .  .  ."  To  have 
God  means  that  God  has  all  of  us.  Coveting 
anything  apart  from  Him  is  to  lose  Him. 
Honesty  compels  most  of  us  to  admit  that  we 
are  not  conscious,  as  Jesus  was,  of  this  most 
real  reinforcement  of  ourselves  from  outside. 
God  is  to  us  an  idea  rather  than  a  factor,  a 
force.  Jesus  would  tell  us  that  covetousness, 
a  divided  heart,  doomed  us  to  spiritual  numb- 
ness and  rendered  God  beyond  our  feeling. 
We  want  the  righteous  God,  and  at  the  same 
time  we  want  our  own  way;  we  want  our 
Father's  "well  done",  and  we  want  to  stand  in 
with  our  neighbours ;  we  want  to  do  His  will, 
and  we  want  to  get  on  in  the  world ;  we  want 
to  spend  and  be  spent  for  the  Kingdom,  and 
we  want  to  be  reasonably  comfortable  and 
amused  while  we  are  doing  it.  James  would 
call  us  "double-minded,"  and  Jesus  would 
explain  the  doubleness  by  two  deities — God 
and  mammon. 

If  we  covet  God,  He  must  be  coveted  with 
our  entire  natures  in  order  to  be  had.  There 
can  be  no  side  desires;  the  whole  current  of 
our  being  must  set  just  one  way.  An  occa- 
sional wistfulness  for  higher  things,  a  stray 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT     215 

trust  in  love,  a  partial  resolve  to  seek  right- 
eousness, a  fitful  aspiration  for  justice,  a 
thought  once  in  a  while  of  the  will  of  the  Most 
High — these  will  never  give  us  God. 

Night  sucks  them  down,  the  tribute  of  the  pit. 
Whose  names,  half-entered  in  the  book  of  life. 
Were  God's  desire  at  noon. 

"Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  air\ 
or  there  is  some  undevoted  particle  of  the  self 
coveting  somewhat  discordant  with  God,  who 
is  love;  and  that  is  idolatry.  To  give  one's 
whole  self  to  Him  with  the  completeness  of 
Jesus'  consecration  is  so  to  find  God,  and  to 
be  satisfied  in  Him,  that  there  is  no  fractional 
longing  left  to  covet  aught  unrelated  with  His 
will.  God  is  all  in  all.  "Whom  have  I  in 
heaven  but  Thee?  And  there  is  none  upon 
earth  I  desire  besides  Thee." 

But  this  is  only  to  face  ourselves  with  the 
problem  that  baffled  Saul  of  Tarsus.  How  is 
it  in  our  power  to  concentrate  our  love  and 
leave  no  fractional  desires  straying  off  on 
unhallowed  ends?  Jesus  Christ  proved  the 
solution  of  Saul's  problem.  After  the  spell  of 
His  mastering  Personality  had  been  cast  over 


216    THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS 

him,  Paul  said,  "One  thing  I  do,"  "To  me  to 
Hve  is  Christ."  God,  when  He  comes  to  us 
through  the  Figure  of  Jesus,  claims  and  cap- 
tures as  much  as  in  us  is.  Jesus  engrosses  a 
whole  man,  fills  the  entire  horizon.  We  covet 
His  life  with  God,  His  life  with  men,  His  gifts. 
And  we  are  so  covetous  of  Him  that  we  covet 
nothing  else. 

Our  safety  from  all  other  coveting  lies  in 
constantly  looking  off  to  Him,  and  letting 
Him  draw  out  our  every  desire  and  confidence 
and  fasten  them  on  Himself. 

"Thou,  O  Christ,  art  all  I  want; 
More  than  all  in  Thee  I  find." 

Then  God  through  Him  possesses  us  entirely, 
and  we  seek  Him  with  our  whole  hearts,  and 
find  Him.  "The  Lord  is  my  portion,  saith  my 
soul";  "I  have  no  good  beyond  Thee.^^ 


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Princeton  Theological   Seinmary-Spe 


1    1012  01002  1600 


